Category: Enlightenment

If One Sees Nought – Osho

Now try to understand Tilopa’s sutra:

If one sees nought when staring into space, if with the mind one then observes the mind, one destroys distinctions and reaches buddhahood.

If one sees nought when staring into space . . . This is a method, a tantra method: to look into space, into the sky, without seeing; to look with an empty eye. Looking, yet not looking for something: just an empty look.

Sometimes you see in a madman’s eyes an empty look – and madmen and sages are alike in certain things. A madman looks at your face, but you can see he is not looking at you. He just looks through you as if you are a glass thing, transparent; you are just in the way, he is not looking at you. And you are transparent for him: he looks beyond you, through you. He looks without looking at you; the “at” is not present, he simply looks.

Look in the sky without looking for something, because if you look for something a cloud is bound to come: “something” means a cloud; “nothing” means the vast expanse of the blue sky. Don’t look for any object. If you look for an object, the very look creates the object: a cloud comes, and then you are looking at a cloud. Don’t look at the clouds. Even if there are clouds, you don’t look at them – simply look, let them float, they are there. Suddenly a moment comes when you are attuned to this look of not-looking – clouds disappear for you, only the vast sky remains. It is difficult because eyes are focused, and your eyes are tuned to look at things.

Look at a small child the first day born. He has the same eyes as a sage – or like a madman: his eyes are loose and floating. He can bring both his eyes to meet at the center; he can allow them to float to the far corners – they are not yet fixed. His system is liquid, his nervous system is not yet a structure, everything is floating. So a child looks without looking at things; it is a mad look. Watch a child: the same look is needed from you, because again you have to attain a second childhood.

Watch a madman, because the madman has fallen out of the society. Society means the fixed world of roles, games. A madman is mad because he has no fixed role now, he has fallen out: he is the perfect drop-out. A sage is also a perfect drop-out in a different dimension. He is not mad; in fact, he is the only sanest possibility. But the whole world is mad, fixed – that’s why a sage also looks mad. Watch a madman: that is the look which is needed.

In old schools of Tibet, they always had a madman, just for the seekers to watch his eyes. A madman was very much valued. He was searched after because a monastery could not exist without a madman. He becomes an object to observe. The seekers will observe the madman, his eyes, and then they will try to look at the world like the madman. Those days were beautiful.

In the East, madmen have never suffered like they are suffering in the West. In the East they were valued, a madman was something special. The society took care of him, he was respected, because he has certain elements of the sage, certain elements of the child. He is different from the so-called society, culture, civilization; he has fallen out of it. Of course, he has fallen down; a sage falls up, a madman falls down – that’s the difference – but both have fallen out. And they have similarities. Watch a madman, and then try to let your eyes become unfocused.

In Harvard, they were doing one experiment a few months ago, and they were surprised, they couldn’t believe it. They were trying to find out whether the world, as we see it, is so or not – because many things have surfaced within the few last years.

We see the world not as it is; we see it as we expect it to be, we project something onto it.

It happened that a great ship reached a small island in the Pacific for the first time. The people of the island didn’t see it, nobody! And the ship was so vast – but the people were attuned, their eyes were attuned to small boats. They had never known such a big ship; they had never seen such a thing. Simply their eyes would not catch the glimpse, their eyes simply refused.

In Harvard, they tried [experimented] on a young man: they gave him spectacles with distorting glass, and he had to wear them for seven days. For the first three days he was in a miserable state, because everything distorted, the whole world around distorted . . . It gave him such a severe headache, he couldn’t sleep. Even with closed eyes those distorted figures would . . . the faces distorted, the trees distorted, the roads distorted. He couldn’t even walk because he couldn’t believe what is true and what is given by the projection of distorting glasses.

But a miracle happened! After the third day he became attuned to them; the distortion disappeared. The glasses remained the same, distorting, but he started looking at the world in the same old way. Within a week everything was okay: there was no headache, no problem, and the scientists were simply surprised; they couldn’t believe it was happening. The eyes had completely dropped, as if the glasses were no longer there. The glasses were there, and they were distorting – but the eyes had come to see the world for which they were trained.

Nobody knows whether what you are seeing is there or not. It may not be there; it may be there in a totally different way. The colors you see, the forms you see, everything is projected by the eyes. And whenever you look fixedly, focused with your old patterns, you see things according to your own conditioning. That’s why a madman has a liquid look, an absent look, looking and not looking together.

This look is beautiful. It is one of the greatest tantra techniques:

If one sees nought when staring into space . . .

Don’t see, just look. For the beginning few days, again and again you will see something, just because of old habit. We hear things because of old habit. We see things because of old habit. We understand things because of old habit.

One of the greatest disciples of Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, used to insist on a certain thing to his disciples – and everybody resented it, and many people left simply because of that insistence. If somebody said, “Yesterday you told . . .,” he immediately would stop him and say, “Don’t say it like that. Say, ‘I understood that you said this thing yesterday. I understood . . ..’ Don’t say what I said, you cannot know that. Talk about what you heard.” And he would insist so much because we are habitual.

Again, you might say, “In the Bible, it is said . . .,” and he would say, “Don’t say that! Simply say that you understand that this is said in the Bible.” With each sentence he insisted, “Always remember that this is your understanding.”

We go on forgetting. His disciples went on forgetting again and again, and every day, and he was stubborn about it. He would not allow you to go on. He would say, “Go back. Say first that, ‘I understand you said this, this is my understanding,’ . . . because you hear according to yourself, you see according to yourself – because you have a fixed pattern of seeing and hearing.”

This has to be dropped. To know existence, all fixed attitudes have to be dropped. Your eyes should be just windows, not projectors. Your ears should be just doors, not projectors.

It happened: One psychoanalyst who was studying with Gurdjieff tried to do this experiment. In a wedding ceremony, he tried a very simple but beautiful experiment. He stood by the side, people passing, and he watched them, and he felt that nobody at the receiving end was hearing what they were saying – so many people, some rich man’s wedding ceremony. So he also joined in, and he said very quietly to the first person in the receiving line, “My grandmother died today.” The man said, “So good of you, so beautiful.” Then to another he said it and the man said, “How nice of you.” And to the groom, when he said this, he said, “Old man, it is time you also followed.”

Nobody is listening to anybody. You hear whatsoever you expect. Expectation is your specs – that is the glasses. Your eyes should be windows – this is the technique.

Nothing should go out of the eyes, because if something goes [out] a cloud is created. Then you see things which are not there, then a subtle hallucination . . . Let pure clarity be in the eyes, in the ears; all your senses should be clear, perception pure – only then existence can be revealed to you. And when you know existence, then you know that you are a buddha, a god because in existence everything is divine.

If one sees nought when staring into space, if with the mind one then observes the mind . . .

First stare into the sky; lie down on the ground and just stare at the sky. Only one thing has to be tried: don’t look at anything. In the beginning you will fall again and again, you will forget again and again. You will not be able to remember continuously. Don’t be frustrated, it is natural because of so long a habit. Whenever you remember again, unfocus your eyes, make them loose, just look at the sky – not doing anything, just looking. Soon a time comes when you can see into the sky without trying to see anything there.

Then try it with your inner sky:

. . . if with the mind one then observes the mind . . .

Then close your eyes and look inside, not looking for anything, just the same absent look. Thoughts floating but you are not looking for them, or at them – you are simply looking. If they come it is good, if they don’t come it is good also. Then you will be able to see the gaps: one thought passes, another comes – and the gap. And then, by and by, you will be able to see that the thought becomes transparent, even when the thought is passing you continue to see the gap, you continue to see the hidden sky behind the cloud.

And the more you get attuned to this vision, thoughts will drop by and by, they will come less and less, less and less. The gaps will become wider. For minutes together no thought coming, everything is so quiet and silent inside – you are for the first time together. Everything feels absolutely blissful, no disturbance. And if this look becomes natural to you – it becomes, it is one of the most natural things; one just has to unfocus, decondition:

. . . one destroys distinctions . . . then there is nothing good, nothing bad; nothing ugly, nothing beautiful . . . and reaches Buddhahood.

Buddhahood means the highest awakening. When there are no distinctions, all divisions are lost, unity is attained, only one remains. You cannot even call it “one,” because that too is part of duality.

One remains, but you cannot call it “one,” because how can you call it “one” without deep down saying “two.” No, you don’t say that “one” remains, simply that “two” has disappeared, the many has disappeared. Now it is a vast oneness, there are no boundaries to anything.

One tree merging into another tree, earth merging into the trees, trees merging into the sky, the sky merging into the beyond . . . you merging in me, I merging in you . . . everything merging . . . distinctions lost, melting and merging like waves into other waves . . . a vast oneness vibrating, alive, without boundaries, without definitions, without distinctions . . . the sage merging into the sinner, the sinner merging into the sage . . . good becoming bad, bad becoming good . . . night turning into the day, the day turning into the night . . . life melting into death, death molding again into life – then everything has become one.

Only at this moment buddhahood is attained […]

When Buddha attained to the ultimate, the utterly ultimate enlightenment, he was asked, “What have you attained?” And he laughed and said, “Nothing – because whatsoever I have attained was already there inside me. It is not something new that I have achieved. It has always been there from eternity; it is my very nature. But I was not mindful about it, I was not aware of it. The treasure was always there, but I had forgotten about it.”

You have forgotten, that’s all – that’s your ignorance. Between a buddha and you there is no distinction as far as your nature is concerned, but only one distinction, and that distinction is that you don’t remember who you are – and he remembers. You are the same, but he remembers, and you don’t remember. He is awake, you are fast asleep, but your nature is the same.

Try to live it out in this way – Tilopa is talking about techniques – live in the world as if you are the sky, make it your very style of being. Somebody is angry at you, insulting – watch. If anger arises in you, watch; be a watcher on the hills, go on looking and looking and looking. And just by looking, without looking at anything, without getting obsessed by anything, when your perception becomes clear, suddenly, in a moment, in fact no time happens, suddenly, without time, you are fully awake; you are a buddha, you become the enlightened, the awakened one.

What does a buddha gain out of it? He gains nothing. Rather, on the contrary, he loses many things: the misery, the pain, the anguish, the anxiety, the ambition, the jealousy, the hatred, the possessiveness, the violence – he loses all. As far as what he attains, nothing. He attains that which was already there, he remembers.

-Osho

From Tantra: The Supreme Understanding, Discourse #2

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

The first part of this talk is here The Root Problem.

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.

Consider Your Essence as Light Rays Rising – Osho

Consider Your Essence as Light Rays Rising from Center to Center up the Vertebrae, and so Rises ‘Livingness’ in you.

The first technique:

Many yoga methods are based on this. First understand what it is, then the application. The vertebrae, the spine, is the base of both your body and mind. Your mind, your head, is the end part of your spine. The whole body is rooted in the spine. If the spine is young, you are young. If the spine is old, you are old. If you can keep your spine young, it is difficult to become old. Everything depends on your spine. If your spine is alive, you will have a very brilliant mind. If the spine is dull and dead, you will have a very dull mind. The whole yoga tries in many ways to make your spine alive, brilliant, filled with light, young and fresh.

The spine has two ends: the beginning is the sex center and the end is sahasrar, the seventh center at the top of the head. The beginning of the spine is attached to the earth, and sex is the most earthly thing in you. From the beginning center in your spine you are in contact with nature, with what Sankhya has called prakrati – the earth, the material. From the last center, or the second pole, sahasrar, in the head, you are in contact with the divine. These are the two poles of your existence. First is sex and second is the sahasrar. There is no word for sahasrar in English. These are the two poles. Either your life will be sex oriented or sahasrar oriented. Either your energy will be flowing down from the sex center back to the earth, or your energy will be released from the sahasrar into the cosmos. From the sahasrar you flow into the brahman, into the absolute Existence. From sex you flow down into the relative existence. These are the two flows, the two possibilities. Unless you start flowing upwards, your misery will never end. You may have glimpses of happiness, but only glimpses – and very illusory ones.

When the energy starts moving upwards you will have more and more real glimpses. And once it reaches the sahasrar and is released from there, you will have the absolute bliss with you. That is nirvana. Then there is no glimpse; you become the bliss itself. So the whole thing for yoga and tantra is how to move energy upwards through the vertebrae, through the spinal column, how to help it move against gravity. Sex is very easy because it follows gravitation. The earth is pulling everything down, back; your sex energy is pulled by the earth. You may not have heard it, but astronauts have felt this – that the moment they move beyond the earth’s gravity they don’t feel much sexuality. As the body loses weight, sexuality dissolves, disappears.

The earth is pulling your life energy down and this is natural, because the life energy comes from the earth. You eat food and you are creating life energy within you; it comes from the earth, and the earth is pulling it back. Everything goes to its source. And if it continues to move in this way, life energy going back again and again, and you are moving in a circle, you will go on moving for lives and lives. You can go on moving this way infinitely unless you take a jump just like the astronauts. Like the astronauts, you have to take a jump and move beyond the circle. Then the pattern of earth’s gravitation is broken. It can be broken!

The techniques for how it can be broken are here – for how the energy can move vertically and rise up within you, reaching new centers; for how new energies can be revealed within you, making you a new person with every move. And the moment the energy is released from your sahasrar, the opposite pole of sex, you are no more man. Then you don’t belong to this earth; you have become divine. That is what is meant when we say Krishna is God or Buddha is God. Their bodies are just like yours – their bodies will have to fall ill and they will have to die – everything happens in their bodies as it happens to you. Only one thing is not happening in their bodies which is happening to you: the energy has broken the gravitation pattern. […]

How can the pattern be broken? This technique is very useful for breaking the pattern. First understand something basic. One, if you have observed at all, you must have observed that your sex energy moves with imagination. Just through imagination your sex center starts functioning. Really, without imagination it cannot function. That is why if you are in love with someone it functions better – because with love imagination enters. If you are not in love it is very difficult. It will not function. […]

The sex center functions through imagination. That is why even in dreams you can get erections and ejaculations. They are actual. Dreams are just imagination. It has been observed that every man, if physically fit, will have at least ten erections in the night. With every movement of the mind, with only a slight thought of sex, the erection will come. Your mind has many energies, many faculties, and one is will. But you cannot will sex. For sex, will is impotent. If you try to love someone, you will feel you have gone impotent. So never try. Will never functions with sex; only imagination will function. Imagine, and the center will start to function. Why am I emphasizing this fact? Because if imagination helps the energy to move, then you can move it upwards or downwards just by imagination. You cannot move your blood by imagination; you cannot do anything else in the body by imagination. But sex energy can be moved by imagination. You can change its direction.

This sutra says, “Consider your essence as light rays” – think of yourself, your being, as light rays – “from center to center up the vertebrae” – up your spine – “and so rises ‘livingness’ in you.” Yoga has divided your spine into seven centers. The first is the sex center and the last is sahasrar, and between these two there are five centers. Some systems divide into nine, some into three, some into four. Division is not very meaningful; you can make your own division. Just five centers are enough to work with; the first is the sex center, the second is just behind the navel, the third is just behind the heart, the fourth is behind your two eyebrows, just in between, in the middle of the forehead. And the fifth, sahasrar, is just on the peak of your head.

These five will do.

This sutra says, “Consider yourself . . .,” which means imagine yourself – close your eyes and imagine yourself just as if you are light. This is not just imagination. In the beginning it is, but it is reality also because everything consists of light. Now science says that everything consists of electricity, and tantra has always said that everything consists of light particles – and you also. That is why the Koran says that God is light. You are light! Imagine first that you are just light rays; then move your imagination to the sex center. Concentrate your attention there and feel that light rays are rising upwards from the sex center, as if the sex center has become a source of light and light rays are moving in an upsurge – upwards towards the navel center. Division is needed because it will be difficult for you to connect your sex center with the sahasrar. So smaller divisions will be of help. If you can connect, no divisions are needed. You can just drop all divisions from your sex center onwards, and the energy, the life force will rise up as light towards the sahasrar. But divisions will be more helpful because your mind can conceive of smaller fragments more easily.

So just feel that the energy – just the light rays – is rising up from your sex center to your navel like a river of light. Immediately, you will feel a warmth rising in you. Soon your navel will become hot. You can feel the hotness; even others can feel that hotness. Through your imagination, the sex energy will have started to rise. When you feel that now the second center at the navel has become a source of light, that the rays are coming and being collected there, then start to move to the heart center. As the light reaches the heart center, as the rays are coming, your heartbeat will be changed. Your breathing will become deeper, and a warmth will come to your heart. Go on upwards.

Consider your essence as light rays from center to center up the vertebrae, and so rises ‘livingness’ in you. And as you will feel warmth, just side by side you will feel a “livingness,” a new life coming to you, an inward light rising up. Sex energy has two parts: one is physical and one is psychic. In your body everything has two parts. Just like your body and mind, everything within you has two parts – one material and the other spiritual. Sex energy has two parts. The material part is semen; it cannot rise upwards, there is no passage for it. Because of this, many physiologists of the West say that tantra and yoga methods are nonsense and they deny them completely. How can sex energy rise up? There is no passage and sex energy cannot rise. They are right and still wrong. Semen, the material part, cannot rise – but that is not the whole of it. Really, it is only the body of sex energy, it is not the sex energy. The sex energy is the psychic part of it, and the psychic part can rise. And for that psychic part, the spinal passage is used – the spinal passage and its centers. But that has to be felt and your feelings have gone dead.

I remember somewhere that a certain psychotherapist wrote about a patient, a woman. He was telling her to feel something, but the psychotherapist felt that whatever she did she was not feeling but thinking about feeling – and that is a different thing. So the therapist put his hand on the woman’s hand and pressed it, telling her to close her eyes and relate what she felt. She said immediately, “I feel your hand.”

But the therapist said, “No, this is not your feeling. This is just your thinking, your inference. I have put my hand in your hand; you say you are feeling my hand. But you are not. This is inference. What do you feel?”

So she said, “I feel your fingers.”

The therapist again said, “No, this is not feeling. Don’t infer anything. Just close your eyes and move to the place where my hand is; then tell me what you feel.”

Then she said, “Oh! I was missing the whole thing. I feel pressure and warmth.”

When a hand touches you, a hand is not felt. Pressure and warmth are felt. The hand is just inference, it is intellect, not feeling. Warmth and pressure, that is feeling. Now she was feeling. We have lost feeling completely. You will have to develop feeling; only then can you do such techniques. Otherwise, they will not function. You will just intellectualize, you will just think that you are feeling, and nothing will happen. That is why people come to me and say, “You tell us this technique is so significant, but nothing happens.” They have tried, but they are missing a dimension – the feeling dimension. So first you will have to develop that, and there are some methods which you can try.

You can do one thing. If you have a small child in your house, follow the child around for one hour every day. It will be better and more fulfilling than following a buddha. Allow the child to move on all fours, and you also move on all fours. Just follow the child moving on all fours, and you will feel for the first time a new life energy coming to you. You will again become a child. Look at the child and just follow. He will go to every corner; he will touch everything – not only touch, he will taste everything, he will smell everything. Just follow, and do whatsoever he is doing.

You were also a child once; you have done this. The child is feeling. He is not intellectualizing; he is not thinking. He feels a smell, so he moves to that corner from where it is coming. He sees an apple, so he tastes it. Just taste like a child. Watch when he is eating the apple, look at him: he is totally absorbed in it. The whole world has dropped, the world is no more there – only the apple. Even the apple is not and the child is not – only the eating. Just follow a small child for one hour. That hour will be so enriching, you will become again a child.

Your defense mechanisms will drop, your armor will drop, and you will start looking at the world as a child looks – from the feeling dimension. When you feel that now you can feel, not think, you will enjoy the texture of the carpet on which you are moving like a child, the pressure, the warmth – and just by innocently following a child. Man can learn much from children, and sooner or later your real innocence will erupt. You were once a child and you know what it means to be one. You have simply forgotten.

The feeling center must start functioning; only then will these techniques be of any help. Otherwise you will go on thinking that energy is rising, but there will be no feeling. And if there is no feeling, imagination is impotent, futile. Only a feeling imagination will give you a result. You can do many other things and there is no need to make a specific effort to do them. When you go to sleep just feel your bed, feel the pillow – the coldness. Just turn onto it; play with the pillow.

Close your eyes and listen to the noise of the air conditioner, or of the traffic, or of the clock, or anything. Just listen. Don’t label, don’t say anything. Don’t use the mind. Just live in the sensation. In the morning, in the first moment of waking, when you feel that now sleep has gone, don’t start thinking. For a few moments you can again be a child – innocent, fresh. Don’t start thinking. Don’t think about what you are going to do, and when you are starting for the office, and what train you are going to catch. Don’t start thinking. You will have enough time for all that nonsense. Just wait. For a few moments, just listen to the noise. A bird is singing, or the wind is passing through the trees, or a child is crying, or the milkman has come and is making sounds, or the milk is being poured. With anything that happens, feel it. Be sensitive to it, open to it. Allow it to happen to you, and your sensitivity will grow.

When taking a shower, feel it all over the body – every drop of water touching you. Feel the touch, the coldness, the warmth! Try this the whole day whenever you have the chance, and everywhere there is a chance – everywhere! When just breathing, feel the breath – its movement within and its going out – just feel it! Just feel your own body. You have not felt it.

We are so afraid of our own bodies. No one touches his own body in a loving way. Have you ever given any love to your own body? The whole civilization is afraid of anyone touching himself because from childhood touching has been denied. It appears to be masturbatory to touch oneself in a loving way. But if you cannot touch yourself in a loving way, your body will go dull and dead. It has gone so. Touch your eyes with your palms. Feel the touch, and your eyes will feel fresh and alive immediately. Feel your body all over. Feel your lover’s body, your friend’s body. Massage is good. Two friends can massage each other and feel each other’s bodies. You will become more sensitive.

Create sensitivity and feeling. Then it will be easy for you to do these techniques, and then you will feel “livingness” arising in you. Don’t leave this energy anywhere. Allow it to come to the sahasrar. Remember this: whenever you do this experiment, don’t leave it in the middle. You have to complete it. Take care that no one disturbs you. If you leave this energy somewhere in the middle, it can be harmful. It has to be released. So bring it to the head and feel as if your head has become an opening.

In India we have pictured sahasrar as a lotus – as a thousand-petalled lotus. Sahasra means a thousand petalled – an opening of a thousand petals. Just conceive of the lotus with a thousand petals opened and from every petal this light energy is moving into the cosmos. Again, this is a love act – not with nature now, but with the ultimate. Again, it is an orgasm.

There are two types of orgasms: one is sexual and the other spiritual. The sexual comes from the lowest center and the spiritual from the highest center. From the highest you meet the highest and from the lowest you meet the lowest. Even while actually in the sex act, you can do this exercise; both the partners can do this. Move the energy upwards, and then the sex act becomes tantra sadhana; it becomes meditation.

But don’t leave the energy somewhere in the body at some center. Someone may come and you will have some business, or some phone call will come and you will have to stop. So do it at such a time that no one will disturb you, and don’t leave the energy in any center. Otherwise, that center where you leave the energy will become a wound, and you may create many mental illnesses. So be aware; otherwise, don’t do this. This method needs absolute privacy and no disturbance, and it must be done completely. The energy must come to the head, and it should be released from there.

You will have various experiences. When you will feel that the rays are starting to come up from the sex center, there will be erections or sensations at the sex center. Many, many people come to me very afraid and scared. They say that whenever they start meditation, when they start to move deep, there is an erection. They wonder, “What is this?” They are afraid because they think that in meditation sex should not be there. But you don’t know life’s functioning. It is a good sign. It shows that energy is now there alive. Now it needs movement. So don’t become scared and don’t think that something is wrong. It is a good sign. When you start meditation, the sex center will become more sensitive, alive, excited, and in the beginning the excitement will be just the same as any sexual excitement – but only in the beginning. As your meditation becomes deeper, you will feel energy flowing up. As the energy flows, the sex center becomes silent, less excited.

When the energy will really move to the sahasrar, there will be no sensation at the sex center. It will be totally still and silent. It will have become completely cool, and the warmth will have come to the head. And this is physical. When the sex center is excited, it becomes hot; you can feel that hotness, it is physical. When the energy moves, the sex center will become cooler and cooler and cooler, and the hotness will come to the head.

You will feel dizzy. When the energy comes to the head, you will feel dizzy. Sometimes you may even feel nausea because for the first-time energy has come to the head and your head is not acquainted with it. It has to become tuned. So don’t become afraid. Sometimes you may immediately become unconscious, but don’t be afraid. This happens. If so much energy moves suddenly and explodes in the head, you may become unconscious. But that unconsciousness cannot remain for more than one hour. Within one hour the energy automatically falls back or is released. You cannot remain that way for more than one hour. I say one hour, but in fact it is exactly forty-eight minutes. It cannot be more than that. It never has been in millions of years of experiments, so don’t be afraid. If you do become unconscious, it is okay. After that unconsciousness you will feel so fresh that it is as if you have been in sleep for the first time, in the deepest sleep.

Yoga calls it by a special name – Yoga Tandra: yogic sleep. It is very deep; you move to your deepest center. But don’t be afraid. And if your head becomes hot, it is a good sign. Release the energy. Feel as if your head is opening like a lotus flower – as if energy is being released into the cosmos. As the energy is released, you will feel a coldness coming to you. You have never felt the coldness that comes after this hotness. But do the technique completely; never do it incompletely.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #47

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Consider Your Essence as Light Rays Rising.

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditations.

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 Opening of Sahasrar and Three Questions – Osho

Meditation is going inward. And the journey is endless, endless in the sense that the door opens and goes on opening until the door itself becomes the universe. Meditation flowers, and it goes on flowering until the flowering itself becomes the cosmos. The journey is endless: it begins, but it never ends.

There are no degrees of enlightenment. Once it is, it is there. It is just like jumping into an ocean of feeling. You jump, you become one with it, like a drop dropping into the ocean becomes one with it. But that doesn’t mean that you have known the whole ocean.

The moment is total: the moment of dropping the ego – the moment of ego elimination, the moment of egolessness – is total; it is complete. As far as you are concerned, it is perfect. But as far as the ocean is concerned, as far as the divine is concerned, it is just a beginning, and there will be no end to it.

One thing to remember: ignorance has no beginning, but it has an end. You cannot know from what point your ignorance begins; you always find it there; you are always in the midst of it. You never know the beginning: there is no beginning.

Ignorance has no beginning, but it ends. Enlightenment has a beginning, but it never ends. And both of these become one; they both are one. The beginning of enlightenment and the end of ignorance is a single point. It is one point, a dangerous point with two faces: one face looking toward beginningless ignorance and the other face looking at the beginning of endless enlightenment.

So you reach enlightenment, but yet you never reach it. You come to it, you drop into it, you become one with it, but still a vast unknown remains. And that is the beauty of it; that is the mystery of it.

If everything was known in enlightenment, there would be no mystery. If everything became known, the whole thing would become ugly; then there would be no mystery, everything would be dead. So enlightenment is not “knowing” in this sense; it is not knowing as a suicide, it is knowing in the sense that it is an opening into greater mysteries. “Knowing” then means that you have known the mystery, you have become aware of the mystery. It is not that you have solved it: it is not that there is a mathematical formula and now everything is known. Rather, the knowing of enlightenment means that you have come to a point where the mystery has become ultimate. You have known that this is the ultimate mystery; you have known it as a mystery, now it has become so mysterious that you cannot hope to solve it. Now you leave all hope.

But it is not despair, it is not hopelessness; it is just understanding the nature of the mystery. The mystery is such that it is insoluble; the mystery is such that the very effort to solve it is absurd. The mystery is such that to try to solve it through the intellect is meaningless: you have come to the limit of your thinking. Now there is no thinking at all, and knowing begins.

But this is something very different from the knowing of science. The very word science means knowing, but knowing in the sense of making a mystery demystified. Religious knowing means something quite the contrary. It is not demystifying reality; rather, all that was known before becomes mysterious again, even ordinary things about which you were confident, absolutely confident, that you knew. Now even that gate is lost. Everything, in a way, becomes gateless – endless and unsolvable.

Knowing must be conceived of in this sense: it is participating in the exclusive mystery of existence; it is saying yes to the mystery of life. The intellect – intellectual theory – is not there now; you are face to face with it. It is an existential encounter – not through the mind, but through you, the totality of you. Now you feel it from everywhere: from your body, from your eyes, from your hands, from your heart. The total personality comes in contact with the total mystery.

This is just a beginning. And the end will never be, because the end would mean demystifying it. This is the beginning of enlightenment. There is no end to it, but this is the beginning. You can conceive of the end of ignorance, but there will be no end to this enlightened state of mind. Now you have jumped into a bottomless abyss.

You can conceive of it from so many points of view. If one comes to this state of mind through kundalini it will be an endless flowering. The one thousand petals of the sahasrar do not mean exactly one thousand: the “one thousand” simply means the greatest number – it is symbolic. This means that the petals of kundalini that are flowering are endless; they will go on opening and opening and opening. So you will know the first opening, but the last will never be there because there is no limit to it. One can come to this point through kundalini or one can come to it through other ways. Kundalini is not indispensable.

Those who reach enlightenment by other paths come to this same point, but the name will be different, the symbol will be different. You will conceive of it differently because what is happening cannot be described, and what is being described is not exactly what is happening. The description is an allegory, the description is metaphoric. You can say it is like the flowering of a flower – though there is no flower at all. But the feeling is just as if you are a flower that is beginning to open; the same feeling of opening is there. But someone else can conceive of it differently. He can say, “It is like the opening of a door – a door that leads to the infinite, a door which goes on opening.” So one can use anything.

Tantra uses sex symbols. They can use them! They say, “It is a meeting, an endless union.” When tantra says, “It is just like maithuna, intercourse, what is meant is: a meeting of individuals with the infinite – but endless, eternal. It can be conceived of in this way, but any conception is bound to be just a metaphor. It is symbolic; it is bound to be. But when I say symbolic, I do not mean that a symbol has no meaning.

A symbol has meaning as far as your individuality is concerned because you conceived of it in this way. You cannot conceive of it otherwise. A person who has not loved flowers, who has not known flowering, who has passed by flowers but remained unacquainted with them, whose whole life is not concerned with the realm of flowering, cannot feel it as a flowering. But if you feel it as a flowering, it means so many things; it means that the symbol is natural to you, it corresponds somehow to your personality.

The first question:

How does one feel after the sahasrar begins to open?

After the sahasrar opens, there should be no feeling but inner silence and void. The feeling will be acute in the beginning – when you feel it for the first time it will be very acute – but the more you know it, the less acute it will become. The more you become one with it, the more it will lose its acuteness. Then a moment comes – and it must come – when you will not feel it at all.

Feeling is always of the new. You feel that which is strange; you do not feel that which is not strange. The strangeness is felt. If it becomes one with you and you have known it, you won’t feel it, but that doesn’t mean that it will not be there. It will be there, even more than before. It will go on intensifying more and more, but the feeling will be there less and less. And the moment will come when there will be no feeling; there will be no sense of “otherness,” so the feeling will not be there.

When the flowering of the sahasrar comes for the first time, it is something other than you. It is unknown to you and you are unacquainted with it. It is something penetrating into you, or you are penetrating into it. There is a gap between you and it, but the gap will gradually drop and you will become one with it. Now you will not see it as something happening to you; you will become the happening. It will go on expanding and you will become one with it.

Then you will not feel it. You will notice it, but will not feel it any more than you feel your breathing. You feel your breathing only when something new, or wrong, has happened to you; otherwise, you do not feel it. You do not even feel your body unless some disease has crept in, unless you are ill. If you are completely healthy, you do not feel it: you just have it. Really, your body is more alive when you are healthy, but you do not feel it. You need not feel it; you are one with it.

The second question:

What happens to religious visions and other manifestations of deep meditation when the sahasrar opens?

All these things will drop. All pictures will drop – visions, everything, will drop, because these things come only in the beginning. They are good signs, but they will drop away.

Before the opening of the sahasrar comes, many visions will come to you. These are not unreal; visions are real, but with the opening of the sahasrar there will be no more visions. They will not come because this “flowering experience” is the peak experience for the mind, it is the last experience for the mind; beyond this, there will be no mind.

All that is happening beforehand is happening to the mind, but the moment you transcend mind, there will be nothing. When the mind ceases, there will be neither mudras – outward expressions of psychic transformation – nor visions; neither flowers nor serpents. There will be nothing at all, because beyond mind there is no metaphor. Beyond mind the reality is so pure that there is no otherness; beyond mind the reality is so total that it cannot be divided into the experiencer and the experienced.

Within the mind, everything is divided into two. You experience something – you may call it anything; the name doesn’t matter – but the division between the experiencer and the experienced, the knower and the known, remains. The duality remains.

But these visions are good signs because they come only in the last stages. They come only when the mind is to drop; they come only when the mind is to die. Particular mudras and visions are symbolic only, symbolic in the sense that they indicate a coming death for the mind. When the mind dies there will be nothing left. Or, everything will be left, but the divisions between the experiencer and the experienced will not be there.

Mudras, visions – particularly visions – are experiences; they indicate certain stages. It is just like when you say, “I was dreaming”: we can take it for granted that you were asleep because dreaming indicates sleep. And if you say, “I was daydreaming,” then too you have dropped into a sort of sleep, because dreaming is possible only when the mind, the conscious mind, has gone to sleep. So dreaming is indicative of sleep: in the same way, mudras and visions are indicative of a particular state.

You may see visions of certain figures – you can identify them – and these figures, too, will be different for different individuals. The figure of Shiva cannot come to a Christian mind. It cannot; there is no possibility of it coming, but Jesus will come. That will be the last vision for a Christian mind, and it is very valuable.

The last vision to be seen is of a central religious figure. This central figure will be the last vision. To a Christian – and by Christian, I mean one who has imbibed the language of Christianity, the symbols of Christianity, one whose Christianity has entered his blood and bones from his very childhood – the figure of Jesus on the cross will be the last. The knower, the experiencer, is still present, but at the very end there will be the savior. It has been experienced; you cannot deny it. In the last moment of the mind – of the dying mind – in the end, Jesus is there.

But to a Jaina, Jesus cannot come; to a Buddhist, Jesus cannot come. To a Buddhist, the figure of Buddha will be there. The moment the sahasrar opens – with the opening of the sahasrar, Buddha will be there. That is why Buddha is visualized on a flower. The flower was never placed there for the real Buddha – under his feet the flower was not there – but the flower is placed there in statues because statues are not real replicas of Gautam Buddha. They are the representation of the last vision to come into the mind. When the mind drops into the eternal, Buddha is seen in this way: on the flower.

That is why Vishnu is placed on a flower. This flower is symbolic of the sahasrar, and Vishnu is the last figure to be seen by a Hindu mind. Buddha, Vishnu, Jesus, are archetypes – what Jung calls archetypes.

The mind cannot conceive of anything abstractly, so the last effort of the mind to understand reality will be through the symbol that has been most important to it. This peak experience of the mind is the mind’s last experience. The peak is always the end; the peak means the beginning of the end. The peak is the death, so the opening of the sahasrar is the peak experience of the mind, the utmost that is possible with the mind, the last that is possible with the mind. The last figure – the central most figure, the deepest one, the archetype – will come. And it will be real. When I say “vision,” many will deny that it is real. They will say that it cannot be real because they think the word vision means illusionary, but it will be more real than reality itself. Even if the whole world denies it, you will not be ready to accept the denial. You will say, “It is more real to me than the whole world. A stone is not so real as the figure I have seen. It is real; it is perfectly real.” But the reality is subjective; the reality is colored by your mind. The experience is real but the metaphor is given by you, so Christians will give one metaphor, Buddhists will give another, Hindus will give another.

The third question:

Does transcendence come with the opening of the sahasrar?

No, transcendence is beyond the opening. But enlightenment has two connotations. One, the dying mind – the ending mind, the mind that is going to die, the mind that has come to its peak, the mind that has come to its last – conceives of the enlightenment. But a barrier has come and now the mind will not go beyond this. The mind knows that it is ending, and with its ending the mind also knows the end of suffering; the mind also knows the end of division; the mind also knows the end of the conflict that was there. All this ends and the mind conceives of this as enlightenment, but it is still the mind that is conceiving of it. So this is enlightenment conceived of by the mind.

When the mind has gone, then the real enlightenment comes. Now you have transcended, but you cannot talk about it, you cannot say anything about it. That is why Lao Tzu says, “All that can be said cannot be true. That which can be said will not be true, and the truth cannot be said. Only this much can be said, and only this much is true.”

And this is the last statement of the mind. This last statement has meaning, much meaning, but it is not transcendental. The meaning is still a limitation of the mind; it is still mental, it is still conceived of through the mind.

It is just like a flame, a flame in a lamp that is just going to die. Darkness is descending; the darkness is coming, it is encircling nearer and nearer, and the flame is dying, the flame has come to the very end of its existence. It says, “Now there is darkness,” and it goes out of existence. Now the darkness has become full and complete. But the last statement of the dying flame was known by the flame: the darkness was not complete because the flame was there, the light was there. The darkness was conceived of by the light.

The light cannot really conceive of darkness; the light can only conceive of its own limitations, and beyond that is darkness. The darkness was coming nearer and nearer and the light was going to die. It could make its last statement, “I am going to die,” and then the darkness was there. The darkness had been coming and coming and coming; then the light made its last statement and dropped, and the darkness was complete. So the statement was true, but not the truth.

There is a difference between true and truth. Truth is not a statement. The flame has gone and darkness is there; this is truth. Now there is no statement: darkness is there. The statement was true, it was not untrue. It was true: darkness was coming, enclosing, encircling. But still, the statement was made by light, and a statement made by light about darkness can, at the most, be true – not truth.

When the mind is not there, the truth is known: when the mind is not, the truth is. And when the mind is, you can be more true, but not truth; you can be less untrue, but not truth. The last statement that the mind can make will be the least untrue, but that is all that can be said.

So between enlightenment as conceived of by the mind and enlightenment as such, there is much difference, though it is not great. With a dying flame, there is not a single moment before it will die. Then the flame dies, and simultaneously the darkness comes. There is not a single moment between the two conditions, but the difference between them is great.

A dying mind will see visions in the end – visions of that which is coming. But these will be visions conceived of through metaphors, pictures, archetypes. The mind cannot conceive of anything else; the mind is trained in symbols, nothing else. There are religious symbols, artistic symbols, aesthetic, mathematical, and scientific symbols, but these are all symbols. This is how the mind is trained.

A Christian will see Jesus, but a mathematician who is dying, a mind that has been trained nonreligiously, may see nothing in the last moment but a mathematical formula. It may be a zero or it may be a symbol of infinity, but it will not be Jesus, not be Buddha. And a Picasso dying may just see an abstract flow of colors at the last moment. That will be the divine to him; he cannot conceive of the divine otherwise.

So the end of the mind is the end of symbols, and at the end the mind will use the most significant symbol that it knows. And after that, because there is no mind, there will be no symbols.

This is one reason why neither Buddha nor Mahavira talked about symbols. They said that there was no use talking about them since they are all below enlightenment. Buddha would not talk about symbols, and because of this he said that there were eleven questions that should not be asked to him. It was declared that no one should ask these eleven questions; and they should not be asked because they could not be truly answered: a metaphor would have to be used.

Buddha used to say, “I would not like to use any metaphor. But if you ask and I do not reply, you will not feel good. It will not be gentlemanly; it will not be courteous. So, please, do not ask these questions. If I reply to you it will be courteous, but untrue; so do not put me in this dilemma. As far as the truth is concerned, I cannot use a symbol; I can use symbols only to approximate non-truth or approximate truth.”

So there will be persons who will not use any metaphors, any visions. They will deny everything, because truth conceived of by the mind cannot be enlightenment itself; these are two different things. The conceptions of the mind will go when the mind goes, and then enlightenment will be there, but without mind.

So the enlightened personality is without mind – a no-mind personality, living, but without any conceptions; doing, but not thinking about it; loving, but without the concept of love; breathing, but without any meditation. So living will be moment to moment and one with the total, but mind will not be there in between. The mind divides, and now there will be no division.

-Osho

From Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy, Chapter 8

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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Seedless Samadhi – Osho

In the state of nirvichara samadhi, an object is experienced in its full perspective, because in this state knowledge is gained direct, without the use of the senses.

The perception gained in nirvichara samadhi transcends all normal perceptions both in extent and intensity.

When this controlling of all other controls is transcended, the seedless samadhi is attained, and with it, freedom from life and death.

-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

Knowledge is indirect, knowing is direct. Knowledge is through many mediums; it is not reliable. Knowing is immediate, without any medium. Only knowing can be reliable.

This distinction has to be remembered. Knowledge is like a messenger comes and tells something to you: the messenger may have misunderstood the message; the messenger may have added something of his own into the message; the messenger may have dropped something from the message; the messenger may have forgotten something from the message; the messenger may have added his own interpretations into it, or the messenger may be simply cunning and deceptive. And you have to rely on the messenger. You don’t have any direct approach to the source of the message – this is knowledge.

Knowledge is not reliable, and not only one messenger is involved in knowledge, but four. Man is behind many closed doors, imprisoned. First knowledge comes to the senses; then the senses carry it through the nervous system, it reaches to the brain, and then the brain delivers it to the mind, and then the mind delivers it to you, to the consciousness. It is a vast process, and you don’t have any direct approach to the source of knowledge. […]

This is how the mechanism of knowledge functions. It is very difficult in this process to check anywhere unless you can come out of yourself. Mind cannot do that because the mind cannot exist outside the body. It has to depend on the brain; it is rooted in the brain. The brain cannot do it because the brain is rooted in the whole nervous system; it cannot come out. Only at one point the possibility exists to check, and that is at consciousness.

Consciousness is not rooted in the body; the body is just an abode. As you come out of your house and go in, consciousness can come out of the house and go in. Only consciousness can come out of this whole mechanism and look at things, what is happening.

In nirvichara samadhi this happens – thoughts cease. The connection between the mind and the consciousness is cut, because thought is the connection. Without thought you don’t have any mind, and when you don’t have any mind the connection with the brain is broken. And when you don’t have any mind and the connection with the brain is broken, the connection with the nervous system is broken. Your consciousness now can float out and in; all doors are open. In nirvichara samadhi, when thoughts cease, consciousness is free to move and float. It becomes like a cloud without any roots, without any home. It becomes free of the mechanism you have lived with. It can come out; it can go in; there is no hindrance on its path.

Now direct knowledge is possible. Direct knowledge is knowing. Now you can see immediately, without any messengers between you and the source of knowledge. It is a tremendous phenomenon when your consciousness comes out and looks at a flower. You cannot imagine because it is not part of imagination; you cannot believe what happens! When the consciousness can look direct to the flower, for the first time the flower is known, and not only the flower, through the flower the whole existence. In a small pebble, the all is hidden; in a small leaf dancing in the wind, the whole dances. In a small flower by the side of the road, the whole has a smile.

When you come out of your prison of senses, nervous system, brain, mind, layers and layers of walls, suddenly individuals disappear. A vast energy in millions of forms . . . and every form indicating towards the formless, and every form melting and merging into other forms – a vast ocean of formless beauty, truth, goodness. Hindus call it sat-chit-ananda: that which is, that which is beautiful, that which is good, that which is blissful. This is direct perception, aprokshanubhuti, immediate knowing.

Otherwise, all your knowing is indirect, depends on messengers which are not very reliable – cannot be. Their very nature is unreliable. Why? Your hand touches something; now the hand is an unconscious thing. From the very beginning an unconscious part of you takes the message. Intelligence is hidden behind, and on the door an idiot is sitting, and the idiot takes the message. The idiot is the receptionist. The hand is not conscious, and the hand touches something and receives the message. Now through the nerves the message travels. Nerves are not conscious; they don’t have any intelligence – so from one idiot to another now the message is given. From the first idiot to the second much must have changed.

In the first place, the idiot cannot be a hundred percent true because he cannot understand; understanding is not there. The hand is dull, very dull. It carries the work in a mechanical way, robot-like. The message is delivered; much has changed already. The nerves take it to the brain and the brain decodes it. And the brain is also not very much intelligent, because the brain is part of the body, it is the other end of the hand.

If you know something of physiology, you must be knowing that the right hand is connected to the left hemisphere of the brain and the left hand to the right hemisphere of the brain. Your two hands are two receiving ends of the brain. They function for the brain; they are extended brain. Your right hand carries the message to the left brain, your left hand to the right brain. Brain is also not alert; brain is just like a computer – something is fed to it, it decodes, it is a mechanism. Sooner or later we will be able to make plastic brains, because they will be cheap, and they will endure more, and they will create less trouble. And they can be operated very easily, and the parts can be changed: you can even have spare parts always with you.

Brain is a mechanism, and by the discovery of computers it has become perfectly clear that brain is a mechanism; it has no intelligence in it. Then the brain accumulates the whole information, decodes it, gives the message to the mind. Your mind has a little intelligence; very little of that too . . . because your mind is not alert. Your hand is mechanical; your brain is mechanical; your nervous system mechanical, and your mind is asleep, as if drunk. So, from one idiot to another idiot then finally to a drunkard the message reaches!

Gurdjieff used to give vast, big dinners for his disciples, and the first toast was always for the idiots. These are the idiots.

And then this drunkard, half asleep, half awake, interprets it according to the past, because there is no other way. According to the past the mind interprets the present. Everything is going wrong because the present is always new and the mind is always old. But there is no other way; the mind cannot do anything else. It has accumulated much knowledge in the past through these same idiots, as unreliable as anything, and that past is brought to the present, and the present is understood through the past. Everything goes wrong. It is almost impossible to know anything through this process.

That’s why Hindus call the whole world that is known through this process maya, illusion, dreamlike; it is. You have not known the reality yet. These four messengers won’t allow you, and you don’t know how to avoid these messengers or how to come out into the open. The situation is as if you are closed in a dark cell, and just through the keyhole you are looking out, and the keyhole is not passive, the keyhole is active – it interprets, it says, “No, you are wrong; this is not so, this is like this.” Your hand interprets, your nervous system interprets, your brain interprets, and finally the drunkard interprets. And that interpretation is given to you and you live through that interpretation. This is the state of the ignorant mind, the state of the unenlightened.

In nirvichara samadhi, this whole state is shattered. You suddenly come out of this whole mechanism. You don’t rely on it; you simply drop the whole mechanism. You come directly to the source of knowledge; you look immediately to the flower.

This is possible. This is possible only in the highest state of meditation, nirvichara, when thoughts cease. Thought is the link. When thoughts cease, the whole mechanism ceases, and you are separate. Suddenly you are no more imprisoned. You are not looking through the keyhole. You have come out into the world under the sky, open. You look at things as they are, and you will see that things don’t exist; they were your interpretations. Only beings exist; there are no things in the world. Even a rock is a being, howsoever fast asleep, snoring; a rock is a being because the ultimate source is a being. All its parts are beings, souls. A tree is a being, a bird is a being, a rock is a being. Suddenly, the world of things disappears. “Thing” is the interpretation of these idiots and the drunkard mind. Because of this process everything becomes dull. Because of this process only the surface is touched. Because of this process you miss the reality; you live in a dream.

You can create a dream in this way. Just try someday: your wife is sleeping, or your husband, or your child – just rub a cube of ice on the feet of the sleeping person. Do it just a little, not too much, otherwise he will be awakened – just a little and put it away. Immediately you will see the eyes under the lids are moving fast, what psychologists call REM, rapid eye movement. When the eyes are moving rapidly, a dream has started. Because the person is seeing something, that’s why the eyes are moving so fast. Then just in the middle of the dream, you wake the person and ask what he saw. Either he would have seen that he is passing through a river which is very cold, ice cold, or he is walking on snow, or he has reached to the Gourishankar: something like this he will dream. You created a dream because you deceived the first idiot, you touched the feet [with] ice. Immediately the idiot started working, the second idiot was given the message, the third idiot decoded; the fourth, the drunkard – which is also asleep now – immediately started a dream.

You can create dreams; you create many times, unknowingly. Your both hands are on your chest and you are lying on your bed, and you feel that somebody is sitting on your chest, a monster. And when you open your eyes, nobody is there – your own hands, or a pillow.

The same is happening while you are awake. It makes no difference because the whole mechanism is the same; whether the eyes are opened or closed doesn’t make much difference, because there can be no check on the process. Even if you want to check, you will have to go through the whole process itself. How can you check unless you can come out and see what is happening?

This possibility is the whole world of spirituality: that the final consciousness can come out. Drop the whole mechanism, look at the thing directly: “things” disappear. That’s why Hindus say this world is not real, and for the real knower it disappears. Not that rocks will not be there and trees will not be there, they will be there even more so, but they will be no more trees, no more rocks; they will be beings. Your mind turns beings into things: your wife is a thing to be used; your husband is a thing to be possessed; your servant is a thing to be exploited; your boss is a thing to be deceived. The mind, because of this whole idiotic process, turns every being into a thing. When you come out of the mind and have a look under the open sky, suddenly there is nothing at all. “Thingness” disappears.

When thoughts drop, the second thing to drop is the thing. Suddenly the whole world is full of beings, beautiful beings, supreme beings, because they all participate into the ultimate being of God. Definitions disappear – you cannot separate. All separation existed because of the mechanism. Suddenly you see a tree moving out of the earth, not separate, meeting with the sky, not separate, everything joined together; everybody is a member of everybody else. The whole world becomes a net of consciousness, millions and millions of consciousnesses, luminous, kindled from within, every house lighted. Bodies disappear because bodies belong to the world of things. Forms are there but they are no more material; they are forms of moving, dynamic energy, and they go on changing. That is what is happening.

You were a child, now you are young, now you are old. What is happening? – you don’t have a fixed form. The form is continuously flowing and changing. A child is becoming a young man, the young man is becoming old, the old is moving into death.

Then you suddenly see: birth is not birth, death is not death. There are changing forms, and the formless remains the same. You can see that luminous formlessness always remaining the same, moving amidst millions of forms, changing, yet not changing; moving, yet not moving; becoming everything else and yet remaining the same. And that’s the beauty and the mystery; then life is one – a vast ocean of life. Then you don’t see alive beings and dead beings, no, because death doesn’t exist. It is because of the mechanism, a wrong interpretation.

Neither exists birth nor death. That which exists is birthless and deathless, eternal. But this is how it looks when you come out of the mind.

Now try to penetrate the sutras of Patanjali.

In the state of nirvichara samadhi, an object is experienced in its full perspective, because in this state knowledge is gained direct, without the use of the senses.

When senses are not used, when the keyhole is not used to look at the sky – because the keyhole will give its own frame to the sky and destroy everything –the sky will not be bigger than the keyhole, cannot be. How can your perspective be bigger than your eyes? How can your touch be bigger than your hands, and how can a sound be deeper than your ears? – impossible! The eyes, ears, nose are keyholes: through them you are looking at reality. And suddenly you jump out of yourself, in nirvichara; for the first time the vastness, the infinity is known. Now the full perspective is attained. The beginning is not there, the end is not there. There are no boundaries in existence. It is unbounded; there are no limitations. All limitations belong to your senses; they were given by the senses. Existence itself is infinite; in all directions you go on and on and on. There is no end to it.

When the full perspective is attained, then for the first time the subtlest ego that was still clinging to you disappears. Because the existence is so vast – how can you cling to a small puny ego? […]

Under the vast sky your ego becomes simply irrelevant. It drops on its own accord. Even to drop it looks foolish; it is not even worth that. When the perspective is full, you disappear: this is the point to be understood. You are because the perspective is narrow. The narrower the perspective, the bigger the ego; the blinder the person, the bigger the ego . . . No perspective, there exists perfect ego. When the perspective grows, ego gets smaller and smaller. When the perspective is perfect, ego simply is not found.

This is my whole effort here – to make the perspective so full that the ego disappears. That’s why from many directions I go on hitting the wall of your mind, so at least a few more keyholes in the beginning can be made. Through Buddha a new keyhole opens, through Patanjali another, through Tilopa still another. That is what I am doing. I don’t want you to become a follower of Buddha, Tilopa or Patanjali, no, because a follower can never have a bigger perspective – his doctrine is his keyhole.

Talking about so many standpoints, what I am trying to do? – I am trying to do only this: to give you a bigger perspective. Many keyholes in the walls and you can look at the east and you can look at the west, you can look at the south and you can look at the north; and looking at the east you don’t say, “This is the only direction,” you know other directions are there. Looking at the east, you don’t say that “This is the only true doctrine,” because then the perspective becomes narrow. I am talking about so many doctrines so that you can be freed of all directions and all doctrines.

Freedom comes through understanding. The more you understand, the more you become free. And by and by, when you come to know that through so many holes your old keyhole has just become out of date, doesn’t mean much, then an urge arises in you: what will happen if you break down all these walls and just simply run out? Even a single new hole and the whole perspective changes, and you come to know things which you have never known, not even imagined, not even dreamed. What will happen when all the walls disappear, and you are directly face to face with reality under the open sky?

And when I say under the open sky, remember that the sky is not a thing, it is a nothingness. It is everywhere, but you cannot find it anywhere; it is a nothingness. It is simply a vastness. So I never say God is vast – God is vastness. Existence is not vast, because even a vast existence will have limitations. Howsoever vast, somewhere the boundary must be there. Existence is vastness.

That is the Hindu conception of brahma. Brahma means: that which goes on expanding. The very word brahma means that which goes on expanding. The expanse is brahma. In English there is no word; you cannot call brahma God because God is very limited, a concept. Brahma is not God. That’s why in India we don’t have a conception of one God, but many gods. Gods are many; brahma is one. And by brahma . . . the very word simply means the vastness, the expanse; you cannot exhaust it.

That is the meaning when I say under the sky, the open sky: with no walls around it, no doctrines, no senses, no thoughts, no mind; you are simply out of the mechanism, for the first time naked, face to face with reality. Then [in] its full perspective . . . an object is experienced in its full perspective, and to experience an object in its full perspective means that the object simply disappears and becomes the vastness. It may be a focusing of energy.

It is just like, go and look at a well. A quantity of water is there in the well; if you draw the water out, more water is supplied through the hidden springs. You don’t see the springs. You go on taking the water out and new water is continuously flowing. The well is just a hole to the ocean. Many hidden springs are bringing water from all around. If you enter into the well, the well is nothing; really those springs are the things, the real things. The well is not a storage, because in a storage there are no springs. A storage is dead; a well is alive. A storage is a thing; a well is a person. Move now with the springs, go deeper into the springs, and finally you will reach to the ocean. And if you move through all the springs, then from all directions the ocean is flowing in the well: it is all one.

If you look at an object with full perspective, the object is joined from every part of it with infinity; it cannot exist without that. No object exists independently. There is no individuality. Individuality is just an interpretation. Everywhere the whole exists. If you make the part the whole, you are misguided. That is the standpoint of ignorance – then you make the part as if it is the whole. When you look at the part and the whole appears in it, this is the standpoint of an awakened consciousness.

An object is experienced in its full perspective, because in this state knowledge is gained direct, without the use of the senses.

No mediums are used; then many new things suddenly become possible. These new things are the siddhis, the powers. When you have no dependence on the senses, telepathy becomes simply possible. It is because of the senses telepathy is not possible. Clairvoyance becomes simply possible. It is because of the senses clairvoyance is not possible. Miracles become ordinary things. You can read anybody’s thought; there is no need for him to say, no need for him to communicate it. With full perspective, everything becomes revealed, all the veils are taken up. Now there are no more veils; the whole reality is before you. Materialization of things becomes possible. Just whatsoever you want to do, immediately it happens; action is not needed. Action was needed because of the body.

That’s what Lao Tzu means when he says, “The sage lives in inactivity and everything happens.” Millions of things happen around a sage without his doing anything. He looks at you and suddenly there is a transformation – suddenly you are no longer the body; while he looks you have become a consciousness.

Of course this cannot be permanent with you, because when his look has moved you are again the body. Just by being near him you become citizens of some unknown world. You have a taste of the unknown through him because he is now the vast sky himself. Not doing anything, many things happen. But when these things become possible . . . the desires of the sage have disappeared before these things become possible, so a sage never does any miracle. And those who do miracles are not sages, because the doer is not there, and their miracles cannot be miracles; they are ordinary magical tricks. They are fooling people and deceiving them.

A miracle happens – cannot be done. It happens near the sage. Not that he produces Swiss-made watches . . . […]

Miracles happen only when nirvichara samadhi is attained and you come out of your body, but they are never done. That is the basic quality of a miracle – it is never done, it happens, and when it happens, it never produces Swiss-made watches. To attain to nirvichara samadhi and then to produce Swiss-made watches does not make sense! It transforms beings; it helps others to attain to the highest.

Through a sage you can become more watchful, but you will not get a Swiss-made watch! Watchfulness happens; he makes you more aware, alert. He does not give you time, he gives you timelessness. But these things happen, nobody does them, because the door is gone. Only then the nirvichara samadhi is possible. With the doer, how can you cease thinking? – the doer is the thinker. In fact, before you do anything you have to think; the thinker comes first, the doer follows. When the thinker and the doer both are gone and only a witnessing, only a consciousness has remained, then many things simply become possible, they happen.

When Buddha moves, many things happen, but they are not so visible. Only few people will be able to understand what is happening because they belong to a very unknown world. You don’t have any language for it, no concepts for it, and you cannot see it unless it happens to you.

. . . In this state knowledge is gained direct, without the use of the senses.

The mind has gone, and with the mind all the assistants, all the idiots. They are not functioning, they don’t distract you, they don’t disturb your perception, they don’t create any types of hindrances, they don’t project, they don’t interpret. That whole thing is no more there. Simply consciousness is there before reality. And when this happens, consciousness faces consciousness, because there is no matter.

The most beautiful metaphor that I have come across is a mirror facing another mirror. What will happen when a mirror faces another mirror? One mirror mirrors another mirror; the other mirrors this mirror, and there is nothing in the mirror, only mirroring reflected millions of times into each other. The whole world becomes millions of mirrors – and you are also a mirror – and all mirrors empty, because nothing else is there to reflect, not even the frame of the mirror. There is just the mirror – two mirrors facing each other. That is the most graceful moment, the most blissful; grace descends, flowers shower, the whole celebrates that one more has attained, one more traveler has reached home.

The perception gained in nirvichara samadhi transcends all normal perceptions, both in extent and intensity.

These two words are very meaningful: “extent” and “intensity.” When you see the world through the senses, brain and the mind, the world is very dull. It has no luminosity in it, dusty, and soon it becomes boring, and one feels fed up: the same trees, the same people, the same actions – everything just a rut. It is not so.

Sometimes on LSD, or marijuana or hashish, suddenly the tree becomes more green. You have never known it, that the tree was so green, or the rose was so rosy. […]

The whole world becomes beautiful. But this is nothing, absolutely nothing. If you can attain to a single moment of nirvichara, then you will be able to know. The world becomes millions of times more beautiful than any LSD can give you a glimpse. And it is not because you are hitting the mules on the head, it is simply you are no more inside the mules, you have come out, you have dropped the idiots. You face reality with your total nudity.

With no thoughts, you are nude. With no thoughts who are you? – a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian, a communist? Who are you without thoughts? – a man, a woman? Who are you without thoughts? – religious, irreligious? You are nobody without thoughts. All clothes have dropped. You are simply a nudity, a purity, an emptiness. Then the perception is clear, and with that clarity comes extent and intensity. Now you can look at the vast expanse of existence. Now there is no barrier to your perception; your eyes have become infinite.

And intensity: you can look into any event, any person, because things are no more there. Even flowers are persons now, and trees are friends, and rocks sleeping souls. Now intensity happens; you can look through and through. When you can look through and through to a flower, then you will be able to understand what mystics have been saying, and poets.

Tennyson says that “If I can understand a flower, a small flower in its totality, I would have understood all.” Right, absolutely right! If you can understand the part, you will understand the whole, because the part is the whole. And when you try to understand the part, by and by, unknowingly, you will have moved to the whole, because the part is organic to the whole. […]

Intensity becomes so much that you look at a pebble, and through the pebble roads are moving into the whole, and through the pebble you can enter into the highest of mysteries. Everywhere is a door; and you knock, and everywhere you are accepted, welcome. From wherever you enter, you enter into the infinity because all the doors are of the whole. Individuals may be there like doors. Love a person and you enter infinity. Look at a flower and the temple has opened. Lie down on the sand, and every particle of sand is as vast as the whole. This is the higher mathematics of religion.

Ordinary mathematics says the part can never be the whole. This is one of the maxims of ordinary mathematics that start in the universities: the part can never be the whole, and the part is always smaller than the whole, and the part can never be bigger than the whole. These are simple maxims of mathematics, and everybody will agree this is so.

But then there is a higher mathematics. When you have come out of the senses – the world of higher mathematics, and these are the maxims: the part is always the whole; the part is never, never smaller than the whole, and-the absurdity of absurdities – sometimes the part is bigger than the whole.

Now I cannot explain it to you. Nobody can explain, but these are the maxims. Once you are out of your prison you will see that this is how things are. A pebble is part, a very small part, but if you look at it with a thoughtless mind, with simple consciousness, direct, suddenly the pebble becomes the whole – because only one exists. Because no part is in fact a part, or separate: the part depends on the whole, the whole depends on the part. It is not only that when the sun rises, flowers open; the other way is also true – when the flowers open, the sun rises. If there were no flowers, for whom will the sun rise? It is not only that the sun rises, the birds sing; the other way is as true as this-because the birds sing, the sun rises. Otherwise, for whom . . .? Everything is interdependent; everything is related to everything else; everything is intertwined with everything else. Even if a leaf disappears, the whole will miss it; the whole will not be the whole then.

In one of his prayers, Meister Eckhart has said . . . and this is one of the rarest men that Christianity has produced. In fact, he looks a stranger in the world of Christians. He should have been born in Japan as a Zen Master, his insight is so clear, so deep, so beyond dogma.

He says in one of his prayers, “Yes, I depend on you, God, but you also depend on me. If I were not here, who will worship and who will pray? and you would have missed me.” And he is true: it is not out of any ego; it is a simple fact. I know God must have nodded at that moment, “You are true, Eckhart, because if you were not there, I would not have been here.”

The worshipper and the worshipped exist together; the lover and the beloved exist together. One cannot exist without the other, and this is the mystery of existence: everything exists together. This togetherness is God. God is not a person; this very togetherness of all, is God.

The perception gained in nirvichara samadhi transcends all normal perceptions both in extent and intensity.

From everywhere vastness opens, and from everywhere, the depth . . . Look into a flower, and there is an abyss. You can fall into a flower and disappear. […]

It cannot happen, that I know; but in nirvichara it happens. In a flower is abyss. Because of your intensity, you look into the flower and there is the depth, and you can fall into a flower and disappear forever. You look at a beautiful face with nirvichara and there is abyss in beauty, and you can be forever and forever lost; you can fall into it. Everything becomes a door, everything! With your intensity of look, all the doors are open for you.

When this controlling of all controls is transcended, the seedless samadhi is attained, and with it, freedom from life and death.

This is where all the paths culminate, all the Buddhas meet: Tantra and Yoga, Zen and Hassid, Sufi and Baul – all the paths. Paths may be different – they are – but now this comes, the peak; here paths disappear. When this controlling of all controls is transcended . . . because Patanjali says that it is still a controlled state. Thoughts have disappeared: you can perceive now the existence, but still the perceiver and the perception, the object and the subject . . . With the body, the knowledge was indirect. Now it is direct, but still the knower is different from the known. The last barrier exists, the division. When even this is dropped, when this control is transcended, and the painter disappears in the painting and the lover disappears in the love, object and subject disappear. There is no knower and no known.

When this controlling of all controls is transcended . . .

This is the last control, the nirvichara samadhi, samadhi where thoughts have ceased. This is the last control. Still you are, not as an ego, but as a self. Still you are separate from the known – just a very transparent veil, but it is there – and if you cling to this you will be born, because the division has not been transcended; you have not attained to non-duality yet. The seed of duality is still there, and that seed will sprout into new lives and the wheel of life and death will go on moving.

When this controlling of all other controls is transcended, the seedless samadhi is attained – then you attain nirvichara samadhi, seedless – and with it, freedom from life and death.

Then the wheel stops for you. Then there is no time, no space. Life and death have both disappeared like a dream. How to transcend this last control? – it is the most difficult. To attain to nirvichara is very arduous, but nothing compared to the dropping of the last control, because it is very subtle. How to do it? “How” is not relevant at that stage. One has simply to live, watch, enjoy, be loose and natural. This is where Tilopa becomes meaningful.

Because these people like Tilopa are Zen Masters they talk about the goal: loose and natural one lives, doing nothing, doing nothing to transcend the control. Because if you do something, that will again be a control. Your doing will be undoing. Loose and natural – that is the point where the tenth picture of the ten ox herding series becomes meaningful: back again into the world, and not only back again into the world . . . carrying a bottle of wine. Enjoying, celebrating, being ordinary – that is the meaning. Nothing can be done now. All that could be done you have done. Now you simply become loose and natural and forget everything about yoga, control, sadhana, seeking, search. Forget everything about it, because now, if you do something, then the control will continue, and with control there is no freedom. You have to wait, just being loose and natural. […]

This is the state where Zenerin says, “Sitting quietly, sitting silently, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.” Beyond this, words cannot explain. One has to reach to nirvichara and then wait for the seedless samadhi. It comes on its own, just like the grass grows by itself. Then the last control is transcended, and there is no one who transcends it. It is simply transcended. There is no one who transcends it, because if someone is there to transcend it, again the control is there. So you cannot do anything about it. That’s why Patanjali simply ends: it is samadhi both.

Here ends the chapter on samadhis – nothing more to say. He doesn’t say anything how to do it. There is no how to it. This is the point where Krishnamurti gets very angry, when people ask, “How?” There is no point, no method, no technique, because if any technique is possible here, then the control will remain. The control is transcended, but there is no one who transcends. Remaining loose and natural, chopping wood and carrying water, sitting silently, the spring comes, the grass grows by itself.

So you don’t bother about seedless samadhi. You simply think of nirvichara samadhi, samadhi where thoughts cease. Up to there, search continues. Beyond that is the land of no-search. When you have become nirvichara, then, then only you will understand now what to do. All that could be done you have done.

The last barrier is there. That last barrier is created by your doing. The last barrier is created; it is very transparent. It is as if you are sitting behind a glass wall, very beautiful and pure glass, and you can see everything as clearly as without the wall, but the wall is there, and if you try to cross it you will be hit hard and thrown back.

So nirvichara samadhi is not the last thing, it is the last but one. And that “last but one” is the goal. Beyond that, read Zenerin, Tilopa, Lin Chi; sit silently and let the grass grow by itself. Beyond that you can live in the market, because the market is as beautiful as the monastery. Beyond that you can do whatsoever you feel like doing – you can do your own thing – but not before that. You can relax; the search is over. In that relaxation comes the moment of inner tuning with the cosmos, and the wall disappears. Because it is created by your doing; when you don’t do, it disappears. It is fed by your doing. When you don’t do, it disappears, and when the doing has disappeared and you have transcended all control, then there is no life and no death, because life is of the doer, death is of the doer.

Now you are no more; you have dissolved. You have dissolved like a piece of salt thrown into the ocean dissolves, and you cannot find where it has gone. Can you find a piece of salt which has dissolved into the ocean? It has become one with the ocean. You can taste the ocean, but you cannot find the piece.

That’s why, when again and again people ask Buddha, “What will happen when a Buddha dies? What happens when a Buddha dies?” – Buddha remains silent; he never answers about it. It was a very persistent question “What happens to a Buddha?” Buddha remains silent because Buddha appears to be to you – for himself, he is no more. Inside, he is no more. Inside, outside have become one; the part and the whole has become one; the devotee and the God have become one; the lover is dissolved into the beloved.

Then what remains? – love remains: the lover no more, the beloved no more, the knower no more, the known no more – knowing remains. Simple consciousness remains, with no center to it, vast as existence, deep as existence, mysterious as existence. But nothing can be done.

When you come to this point someday – if you seek hard you will come; if you seek hard you will come to nirvichara samadhi – then don’t carry the old habit of doing, then don’t carry the old pattern of doing, then don’t ask “How?” Then simply be loose and natural and let things be. Accept whatsoever happens; celebrate whatsoever happens. Chop wood, carry water, sit silently and let the grass grow.

-Osho

From The Mystery Beyond Mind, Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.3, Discourse #9 (previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V.3).

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

This discourse is the Listening Meditation is the seventh 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 Pure Look – Osho

Nirvitarka samadhi is attained when the memory is purified, and the mind is able to see the true nature of things without obstruction.

The explanations given for the samadhis of savitarka and nirvitarka, also explain the higher states of samadhi, but in these higher states of savichara and nirvichara samadhis, the objects of meditation are more subtle.

The province of samadhi that is connected with these finer objects extends up to the formless stage of the subtle energies.

-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

Mind is memory; it is like a computer. To be exact, it is a biocomputer. It accumulates all that is experienced, known. Through many lives, through millions of experiences the mind gathers memory. It is a vast phenomenon. Millions and millions of memories are stored in it. It is a great storehouse.

All your past lives are stored in it. Scientists say even in a single moment thousands of memories are being collected continuously – without your knowing, the mind goes on functioning. Even while you are asleep, memories are being formed. Even while you are asleep . . . somebody cries and weeps, your senses are functioning and collecting the experience. You may not be able to recall it in the morning because you were not conscious, but in deep hypnosis it can be recalled. In deep hypnosis, everything that knowingly and unknowingly you have experienced ever, can all be recalled back – your past lives also. The simple expanse of mind is really vast. These memories are good if you can use them, but these memories are dangerous if they start using you.

A pure mind is that mind who is master of its own memories. An impure mind is that mind who is continuously impressed by the memories. When you look at a fact, you can look without interpreting it. Then the consciousness is in direct touch with reality. Or, you can look through the mind, through interpretations. Then you are not in touch with reality. The mind is good as an instrument, but if the mind becomes an obsession and the consciousness is suppressed by the mind, then the reality will also be suppressed by the mind. Then you live in a maya; then you live in illusion.

Whenever you see a fact, if you see it directly, immediately, without the mind and the memory coming in, only then it is a fact. Otherwise, it becomes an interpretation. And all interpretations are false because all interpretations are loaded by your past experience. You can see only things which are in tune with your past experience. You cannot see things which are not in tune with your past experience, and your past experience is not all. Life is bigger than your past experience. Howsoever big the mind may be, it is just a tiny part if you consider the whole existence – so small. The known is very little; the unknown is vast and infinite. When you try to know the unknown through the known, then you miss the point. This is the impurity. When you try to know the unknown by the unknown inside you, then there is revelation.

It happened: Mulla Nasruddin caught a very, very big fish in the river. A crowd gathered, because nobody has ever seen such a big fish. Mulla Nasruddin looked at the fish, couldn’t believe that it is possible – such a big fish! With bulging eyes, he moved around the fish but still couldn’t believe. He touched the fish but still couldn’t believe, because he had heard about such a big fish only in fishermen’s tall tales. The crowd was also standing there with unbelieving eyes. Then Mulla Nasruddin said, “Please help me to throw this fish back into the river. It is no fish; it is a lie.”

Anything is true if it fits with your past experience. If it doesn’t fit, it is a lie. You cannot believe in God because it doesn’t fit with your past experience. You cannot believe in meditation because you have always lived in the market, and you only know the reality of the market, of the calculating mind, of the business mind. You don’t know anything about celebration – pure, simple, with no reason at all, uncaused. If you have lived in a scientist’s world, you cannot believe that there can be anything spontaneous because the scientist lives in the world of cause and effect. Everything is caused; nothing is spontaneous. So when the scientist hears that something is possible which is spontaneous – when we say spontaneous we mean that it has no cause, suddenly out of the blue – the scientist cannot believe. He will say, “It is no fish at all, it is a lie. Throw it back into the river.”

But those who have worked in the inner world know that there are phenomena which are uncaused. Not only that – that they know this – they know that the whole existence is uncaused. It is a different, totally different world from the scientific mind.

Whatsoever you see, even before you have seen it, the interpretation has entered. Continuously I watch people; I am talking to them – if it fits, even they have not said anything, they have given me an inner nod, “Yes.” They are saying, “Right.” If it doesn’t fit with their attitudes, they have not said anything, the “no” is written on their face. Deep down they have started saying, “No, it is not true.” […]

You cannot listen because of the memory; you cannot see because of the memory; you cannot look at the facticity of the world because of the memory. Memory comes in – your past, your knowledge, your learning, your experiences – and they color reality. The world is not illusory, but when interpreted, you live in an illusory world. Remember this.

Hindus say the world is maya, illusory. When they say it, they don’t mean the world that is there, they simply mean the world that is inside you, the world of your interpretations. The world of facticity is not unreal; it is the brahma itself. It is supreme reality. But the world that you have created through your mind and memory and in which you live, which surrounds you, like an atmosphere around you . . .  and you move with it and in it. Wherever you go you take it around you. It is your aura, and through it you look at the world. Then whatsoever you are looking at is not a fact, it is an interpretation.

Patanjali says:

Nirvitarka samadhi is attained when the memory is purified, and the mind is able to see the true nature of things without obstruction.

Interpretation is the obstruction. Interpret, and the reality is lost. Look without interpretation and the reality is there, and always has been there. The reality is every moment there. How it can be otherwise? Reality means that which is real. It has not moved from its place even for a single moment. Just you live in your interpretations and you create a world of your own. The reality is common, illusion is private.

You must have heard the story, a very old, ancient Indian story. Five blind men came to see an elephant. They had never seen it; it was absolutely new in the town. Elephants didn’t exist in their part of the country. They all touched, they all felt the elephant, and they all interpreted whatsoever they felt. They interpreted through their experience. One man said, “An elephant is like a pillar,” because he was touching the legs of the elephant – and he was true [right]. He touched, himself, by his own hands, and then he remembered the pillars – and exactly like the pillars. And so on, so forth, they all interpreted. It happened in a primary school in America: a teacher told this story to the boys and girls without telling them that the five persons who came to the elephant were blind. And the story is so well known, and she expected that the children will understand. Then she asked, “Now tell me, who were those five persons who came to see the elephant?” One small boy raised his hand and said, “Experts.”

Experts are always blind. That boy was really a discoverer. This is the essence of the whole story. In fact, they were experts because an expert knows too much about too little. He becomes more and more narrow, narrow, narrow – almost blind to the whole world. Only in a particular direction he is with eyes; otherwise, he is blind. His vision becomes narrower and narrower and narrower. The greater an expert, the narrower the vision. An absolute expert must be completely blind. They say that an expert is a man who knows more and more about little and little [less and less].

Few centuries before there were physicians, doctors, who knew everything about the body. There were no experts. Now, if you have something wrong with your heart then you go to an expert, something wrong with your teeth, you go to another expert . . . […]

To know reality, you don’t have to be an expert. To know reality, you don’t have to be narrow, exclusive. To be in tune with reality you have to put down all your knowledge, put it aside and look at it with the eyes of a child, not with the eyes of an expert – because those eyes are always blind. Only a child has real eyes wide looking, looking everywhere, all around in all directions – because he doesn’t know anything. He is moving in all directions all the time. The moment you know, and you are hooked somewhere. If you can become a child again and can look at reality without any obstruction, interpretation, experience, knowledge, expertise, then Patanjali says, nirvitarka samadhi is attained Because when there is no interpretation, memory is purified, and the mind is able to see the true nature of things.

Patanjali divides samadhi into many layers. First, he talks about savitarka samadhi. It means samadhi with reasoning. You are still a reasoning person, logical. Then he calls the second samadhi nirvitarka, samadhi without reasoning. Now, you are not arguing about reality. You are not even looking at reality with your knowledge. You are simply looking at reality.

The man who looks at reality with logic, reasoning never looks at reality. He projects his own mind on the reality. The reality works like a screen for him to project himself. And whatsoever you project, you will find there. First you put it there, and then you find it there. It is a deception because you yourself put it there, and then you find it there. It is not real.

Nasruddin once told me that “My wife is the most beautiful woman in the world.” I asked him, “Mulla, how you came to know about it?” He said, “How? – simple. My wife told me!” This is how it goes on in the mind: you put it in the reality, and then you find it there. This is the attitude of the savitarka mind. Nirvikalpa mind, nirvitarka mind, puts nothing; it simply looks at whatsoever is the case.

Why you go on putting into reality something from your mind? – because you are afraid of reality. A deep fear of reality is there. It may be that it is not of your liking. It may be that it is against you, your mind. Because the reality is natural; it doesn’t bother who you are. You are afraid: the reality may not be your wish-fulfillment, so it is better not to see it; go on seeing whatsoever you desire. This is how you have lost many lives – fooling around. And you are not fooling anybody else, you are fooling yourself, because by your interpretations and projections the reality cannot be changed. Only you suffer unnecessarily. You think there is a door and there is no door; it is a wall, and you try to pass through it. Then you suffer, then you are shocked.

Unless you see the reality, you will never be able to find the door out of the prison in which you are. The door exists, but the door cannot exist according to your desires. The door exists; if you drop the desires, you will be able to see it. And this is the trouble: you go on wish-fulfilling; you just go on believing and projecting, and every time a belief is shattered, and a projection falls. Because it will happen many times, because your daydreams cannot be fulfilled by reality. Whenever a dream is shattered, a rainbow falls down, a desire dies, you suffer. But immediately you start creating another desire, another rainbow of your wishes. Again, you start making a new rainbow bridge between you and reality.

Nobody can walk on a rainbow bridge. It looks like a bridge; it is not a bridge. In fact, a rainbow doesn’t exist; it only appears. If you go there, you will not find any rainbow. It is a dreamlike phenomenon. The maturity consists in having come to the realization that “Now no more projections, interpretations. Now I am ready to see whatsoever is the case.”

Wittgenstein, one of the very keen intellects of this age, starts his tremendously valuable book Tractatus with the sentence, “The world is all that is the case. You can go on dreaming around it; it will not help. You stop dreaming and see. The world is all that is the case.” You don’t unnecessarily waste your life and time and energy in trying to see something that is not there. Stop dreaming and look at reality.

That is the meaning of nirvitarka samadhi, samadhi without any reasoning. It is just a pure look. You don’t reason about it; you simply look at it. You don’t do anything about it, you simply allow it to be there and penetrate you. In savitarka samadhi you try to penetrate into reality. In nirvitarka samadhi you allow the reality to penetrate you. In savitarka samadhi you try [to make] the reality to be according to you. In nirvitarka samadhi you try yourself to be according to the reality.

The explanations given for the samadhis of savitarka and nirvitarka, also explain the higher states of samadhi, but in these higher states of savichara and nirvichara samadhis, the objects of meditation are more subtle.

Then, Patanjali brings two other words, savichara and nirvichara. Savichara means with contemplation, and nirvichara means without contemplation. They are the higher states of the same phenomenon he calls savitarka and nirvitarka. Savitarka samadhi, if followed, will become savichara.

If you think about logically, and go on thinking, and go on thinking, logic has a boundary to it. It is not infinite. Logic cannot be infinite. In fact, logic denies all infinities. Logic is always in a boundary. Only then it can remain logical, because with the infinite enters the illogical; with the infinite enters the mysterious, with the infinite enters the miraculous. With the entry, the Pandora’s box is open. So logic never talks about the infinite. Logic says everything is finite, can be defined. Everything is within boundaries, can be understood. Logic is always afraid of the infinite. It looks like a vast darkness; logic trembles to move into it. Logic keeps itself on the highway, it never moves into the wild. On the highway everything is safe, and you know where you are going. Once you step aside and move into the wild, you don’t know where you are going. Logic is a very deep fear.

If you ask me, logic is the greatest coward. People who are courageous always go beyond logic. People who are cowardly always remain within the confinements of logic. Logic is a prison, beautifully decorated, but it is not like a vast sky. The sky is not decorated at all. It is undecorated, but it is vast. It is freedom, and freedom has its own beauty; it needs no decorations. The sky is enough unto itself. It needs no painter to paint it, no decorator to decorate it. The very vastness is its beauty. But vastness is terrific [terrifying] also, because it is so tremendous. The mind simply boggles before it; the mind seems so puny. The ego gets shattered before it, so the ego creates a beautiful prison of logic, definitions – everything clean-cut, everything known – of the experience and closes its doors to the unknown, makes a world of itself, a separate world, a private world. That world doesn’t belong to the whole; it has been cut. All the relationships with the whole have been cut.

That’s why logic will never lead anybody to the divine, because logic is human, and it has broken all the bridges with the divine. Divine is wild; it is mysterium and tremendum. It is a great mystery that cannot be solved. It is not a riddle that you can solve, it is a mystery. Its nature is such that it cannot be solved. But if you go on continuing logically thinking, there comes a moment when you reach to the boundary of logic. If you go on thinking more and more, then logical thinking changes into contemplation, into vichar.

The first step is logical thinking and, if you continue, the last step will be contemplation. If a philosopher continues, goes on moving, is not stuck somewhere, he is bound to become a poet someday, because when the boundary is crossed, suddenly there is poetry. Poetry is contemplation; it is vichar.

Think of it this way: a logical philosopher is sitting in the garden and looking at a rose flower. He interprets it. He classifies it – he knows what type of rose this is, from where it comes, the physiology of the rose, the chemistry of the rose: everything logically he thinks about. He classifies it, defines it, works around and around – in fact, never touching the rose at all – moves just around and around, around and around, beating the bush around, leaving the rose there.

Because logic cannot touch a rose. It can cut it, it can put it into pigeonholes, it can classify, it can label it – but it cannot touch it. The rose won’t allow logic to touch it. And even if logic wants, it is not possible. Logic has no heart, and only the heart can touch the rose. Logic is just a head affair. The head cannot touch the rose. The rose will not allow its mystery for the head because the head is just like a rape. And the rose opens itself only for love, not for a rape.

Science is rape; poetry is love. If somebody continues, like Einstein, then the philosopher or the scientist or the logician becomes a poet. Einstein became a poet in his last days. Eddington became a poet in his last days. They started talking about the mysterious. They had come to the boundary of the logic. People who always remain logical are people who have not gone to the very extent, to the very end of their logical reasoning. They are not really logical. If they really go, then a moment is bound to come where logic ends and poetry starts.

Vichar is contemplation. What a poet does? – he contemplates. He just looks at the flower, he doesn’t think about it. This is the distinction, very subtle: the logician thinks about the flower, the poet thinks the flower, not about it. And “about it” is not the flower. You may talk and talk about it, but it is not the flower. The logician goes round and round, a poet goes direct and hits the very reality of flower. For a poet, a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose – not “about”. He moves inwards, into the flower. Now the memory is not brought in. The mind is put aside; it is a direct contact.

This is a higher stage of the same phenomenon. The quality has become refined but the phenomenon is the same.

That’s why Patanjali says,

The explanations given for the samadhis of savitarka and nirvitarka, also explain the higher states of samadhi, but in these higher states of savichara and nirvichara samadhis, the objects of meditation are more subtle.

In savichara, the poet – and anybody who enters savichara becomes a poet – thinks the flower, not about it, but immediate and direct, but there is still division. The poet is separate from the flower. The poet is the subject, and the flower is the object. The duality exists. The duality is not transcended: the poet has not become the flower; the flower has not become the poet. The observer is the observer, and the observed is still the observed. The observer has not become the observed; the observed has not become the observer. Duality exists.

In savichara samadhi logic has been dropped, but not duality. In nirvichara samadhi even duality is dropped. One simply looks at the flower, not thinking of himself and not thinking of the flower; not thinking at all. That is nirvichara: without contemplating, beyond contemplation. One simply is being with the flower, not thinking about, not thinking – neither like the logician nor like the poet.

Now comes the mystic, the sage, who is simply with the flower. You cannot say that he thinks about, or he thinks. No, he is simply with. He allows the flower to be there and allows himself to be there. In that moment of allowing, there comes suddenly a unity. The flower is no more the flower, and the observer is no more the observer. Suddenly energies meet and mingle and become one. Now the duality is transcended. The sage doesn’t know who is the flower and who is watching it. If you ask the sage, the mystic, he will say, “I don’t know. It may be the flower who is watching me. It may be I who is watching the flower. It changes,” he will say, “it depends. And sometimes, there is neither I nor the flower. Both disappear. Only a unified energy remains. I become the flower and the flower becomes me.” This is the state of nirvichara, of no contemplation but of being.

Savitarka is the first step, nirvitarka is the last step in the same direction. Savichara is the first step, nirvichara is the last step in the same direction, on two planes. But Patanjali says the same explanation applies. The highest, up to now, is nirvichara.

Patanjali will come to higher stages also, because few more things have to be explained, and he moves very slowly – because if he moves very fast it will not be possible for you to understand. He is going deeper and deeper every moment. He is leading you, by and by, to the infinite ocean, step by step. He is not a believer of sudden enlightenment – gradual, that’s why his appeal is so great.

Many people have existed who have talked about sudden enlightenment, but they have not appealed to the masses because it is simply unbelievable that sudden enlightenment is possible. Tilopa may say, but that is not the point – that Tilopa says. The point is: does anybody understand it? – that’s why many Tilopas have disappeared. Patanjali’s appeal continues, because nobody can understand those wildflowers, like Tilopa. They suddenly appear just out of the blue and they say, “Suddenly, you can also become like us.” This is incomprehensible. Under their magnetic personality you may listen to them, but you cannot believe them. The moment you leave them you will say, “This man is saying something which is beyond me. It goes over my head.”

Tilopas have lived, talked, tried, but they have not been able to help many people. Rarely somebody will understand them. That’s why Tilopa had to go to Tibet to find a disciple – this vast country, and he couldn’t find a single disciple – and Bodhidharma had to go to China to find a disciple. This ancient country, for thousands of years working on the religious dimension, and he couldn’t find a single disciple. Yes . . . difficult for Tilopa, difficult for Bodhidharma to find a single disciple.

To find someone who can understand Tilopa is difficult because he talks of the goal, and he says, “There is no path and no method.” He is standing on the hilltop and he says, “There is no path,” and you are standing in the valley, dark, damp, in your misery. You look at Tilopa and you say, “Maybe . . .  but how, how one reaches?” You go on asking, “How?”

Krishnamurti goes on telling people there is no method, and after each talk people ask, “Then how? Then how to reach?” And he simply shrugs his shoulders and becomes angry that “I have told you there is no method, so don’t ask how, because how is again asking for the method.” And these are not new people who ask. Krishnamurti has people who have been listening to him for thirty, forty years. Very old, ancient people you will find in his talks. They have been listening to him continuously; religiously they listen to him. They come always – whenever he is there, they come always, and they listen. You will find almost the same faces for years and years and years, and again and again they ask from their valleys, “But how?” – and Krishnamurti simply shrugs his shoulders and says, “There is no how. You simply understand, and you reach. There is no path.”

Tilopa, Bodhidharma, Krishnamurti, they come and go; they are not much help. The people who listen to them enjoy listening to them – even come to a certain intellectual understanding – but they remain in the valley. I myself have come across many people who listen to Krishnamurti, but I have never seen a single person who has gone beyond his valley by listening to him. He remains in the valley, starts talking like Krishnamurti, that’s all; starts telling to other people that there is no way and no path, and remains in the valley.

Patanjali has been a tremendous help, incomparable. Millions have passed through this world by the help of Patanjali because he doesn’t talk according to his understanding, he moves with you. And as your understanding grows, he goes deeper and deeper and deeper. Patanjali follows the disciple; Tilopa would like the disciple to follow him. Patanjali comes to you; Tilopa would like you to come to him. And of course, Patanjali takes your hand and, by and by, he takes you to the highest peak possible, of which Tilopa talks but cannot lead because he will never come to your valley. He will remain on his hilltop and will go on shouting from there. In fact, he will irritate many people because he will not stop; he will go on shouting from the top that “This is possible! And there is no way, and there is no method. You can simply come. It happens; you cannot do [it].” He irritates.

When there is no method, people get irritated and they would like him to stop, not to shout. Because if there is no way, then how to move from the valley to the top? You are talking nonsense. But Patanjali is very sensible, very sane, he moves step by step, takes you from where you are, comes to the valley, takes your hand and says, “One by one, take steps.”

Patanjali said, “There is a path. There are methods.” And he is really very, very wise. By and by, he will persuade you in the end that drop the method and drop the path – there are none – but only at the end, at the very peak, just when you have reached, when even Patanjali leaves you, there is no trouble; you will reach by yourself. At the last moment he becomes nonsensical. Otherwise, he is sensible. And he has remained so sensible the whole way that when he becomes nonsensical, then too he appeals, then too he looks very sensible. Because a man like Patanjali cannot talk nonsense. He is reliable.

The explanations given for the samadhis of savitarka and nirvitarka, also explain the higher states of samadhi, but in these higher states of savichara and nirvichara samadhis, the objects of meditation are more subtle.

By and by, the object of meditation has to be made more and more subtle. For example, you can meditate on a rock, or you can meditate on a flower, or you can meditate on the fragrance of the flower, or you can meditate on the meditator. And then things go subtle and subtle and subtle and subtle. For example, you can meditate on the sound aum. The first meditation is to say it loudly, so it resounds all around you. It becomes a temple of sound all around you: aum, aum, aum. You create vibrations all around you – gross, the first step. Then you close your mouth. Now you don’t say it loudly. Inside you say, aum, aum, aum. Lips are not allowed to move, not even the tongue. Without the tongue and without the lips you say, aum. Now you create an inner atmosphere, inner climate of aum. The object has become subtle. Then the third step: you don’t even recite it; you simply listen to it. You change the position – from the doer, you move to a passivity of a listener. In the third state you don’t pronounce the aum inside also. You simply sit and you hear the sound. It comes because it is there. You are not silent; that’s why you cannot hear it.

Aum is not a word of any human language. It doesn’t mean anything. That’s why Hindus don’t write it in the usual alphabetical order. No, they have made a separate form for it just to distinguish it, that this is not part of the alphabet. It exists on its own, separate, and it means nothing. It is not a word of human language. It is the sound of the very existence itself, the sound of the soundless, the sound of the silence. When everything is silent then it is heard. So you become the hearer. It goes on and on, more and more subtle. And in the fourth stage you simply forget about everything: the doer, and the hearer, and the sound – everything. In the fourth stage there is nothing.

You must have seen ten ox herding pictures of Zen. In the first picture a man is looking for his ox – the ox has gone somewhere in the wild forest, no sign, no footprints – just looking all around, trees and trees and trees. In the second picture he looks happier – footprints have been found. In the third he seems a little bewildered – just the back of the ox is seen near a tree, but difficult to distinguish. The forest is wild, thick. Maybe it is just a hallucination that he is seeing the back of the ox; it may be just a part of the tree, and he may be projecting. Then in the fourth, he has caught hold of the tail. In the fifth, he has controlled by the whip; now the ox is in his power. In the sixth, he is riding on the ox, he is coming back towards the home with a flute, singing a song, riding on the ox. In the seventh, the ox in the stable, he is in the home, happy; the ox has been found. In the eighth, there is nothing; the ox has been found, and the ox and the seeker, the seeker and the sought, both have disappeared. The search is over.

In the ancient days these were the eight pictures. It was a complete set. The emptiness is the last. But then a great Master added two more pictures. The ninth – the man is back, again there. And in the tenth not only the man is back, he has gone to purchase few things to the market, and not only things, he is carrying a bottle of wine. This is really beautiful. This is complete. If it ends on emptiness, something is incomplete. The man is back again, and not only back, he is in the market. Not only in the market, he has purchased a bottle of wine.

The whole becomes more and more subtle, more and more subtle. A moment comes when you will feel it is the perfect, the most subtle. When everything becomes empty and there is no picture, the seeker and the sought both have disappeared. But this is not really the end. There is still a subtleness. The man comes back to the world totally transformed. He is no more the old self – reborn, and when you are reborn, the world is also not the same. The wine is wine no more, the poison is no more poison, the market is no more market. Now everything is accepted. It is beautiful. Now he is celebrating. That is the symbol: the wine.

More and more subtle becomes the search, and more and more strong becomes the consciousness. And a moment comes when the consciousness is so strong that you live like an ordinary being in the world, without fear. But move with Patanjali step by step. The objects of meditation are more and more subtle.

The province of samadhi that is connected with these finer objects extends up to the formless stage of the subtle energies.

This is the eighth picture. The province of samadhi that is connected with these finer objects becomes more and more fine, and a moment comes when the form disappears, and it is formless.

. . . extends up to the formless stage of the subtle energies.

The energies are so subtle you cannot make a picture out of them, you cannot carve them; only the emptiness can show them: a zero – the eighth picture. By and by you will understand how these two other remaining pictures come in.

Patanjali – I call him the scientist of the religious world, the mathematician of mysticism, the logician of the illogical. Two opposites meet in him. If a scientist reads Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras he will understand immediately. A Wittgenstein, a logical mind, will feel immediately an affinity with Patanjali. He’s absolutely logical. And if he leads you towards the illogical, he leads you in such logical steps you never know when he has left the logic and taken you beyond it. He moves like a philosopher, a thinker, and makes so subtle distinctions that the moment he takes you into nirvichara, into no-contemplation, you will not be able to watch when the jump has been taken. He has cut the jump into many small steps. With Patanjali you will never feel fear, because he knows where you will feel fear. He cuts the steps smaller and smaller, almost as if you move on the plain ground. He takes you so slowly that you cannot observe when the jump has happened, when you have crossed the boundary. And he is also a poet, a mystic – a very rare combination. Mystics are there, like Tilopa; great poets are there like the rishis of Upanishads, great logicians are there like Aristotle, but you cannot find a Patanjali. He is such a combination that since him there has been no one who can be compared to him. It is very easy to be a poet because you are out of one piece. It is very easy to be a logician – you are made of one piece. It is almost impossible to be a Patanjali because you comprehend so many opposites, and in such a beautiful harmony he combines them all. That’s why he has become the alpha and the omega of the whole tradition of yoga.

In fact, it was not he who invented yoga; yoga is far [more] ancient. Yoga had been there for many centuries before Patanjali. He is not the discoverer, but he almost became the discoverer and founder just because of this rare combination of his personality. Many people had worked before him and almost everything was known, but yoga was waiting for a Patanjali. And suddenly, when Patanjali spoke about it, everything fell in line, and he became the founder. He was not the founder, but his personality is such a combination of opposites, he comprehends in himself such incomprehensible elements, he became the founder – almost the founder. Now yoga will always be known with Patanjali. Since Patanjali, many have again worked and many have reached new corners of the world of yoga, but Patanjali towers like an Everest. It seems almost impossible anybody ever will be able to tower higher than Patanjali – almost impossible. This rare combination is impossible. To be a logician and to be a poet and to be a mystic, and not of ordinary talents . . . It is possible: you can be a logician, a great logician, and a very ordinary poet. You can be a great poet and a very ordinary logician, third-rate – that’s possible, that’s not very difficult. Patanjali is a genius logician, a genius poet, and a genius mystic; Aristotle, Kalidas and Tilopa all rolled in one – hence the appeal.

Try to understand Patanjali as deeply as possible, because he will help you. Zen Masters won’t be of much help. You can enjoy them – beautiful phenomena. You can be awe-struck, you can be filled with wonder, but they won’t help you. Rarely somebody will be able within you who can take the courage and jump into the abyss. Patanjali will be of much help. He can become the very foundation of your being, and he can lead you, by and by. He understands you more than anybody else. He looks at you and he tries to speak the language that the last amongst you will be able to understand. He is not only a Master; he is a great teacher also.

Educationists know that a great teacher is not one who can be understood only by the topmost few students in the class, just the first benchers, four or five in a class of fifty. He is not a great teacher. A great teacher is one who can be understood by the last benchers. Patanjali is not only a Master, he is a teacher also. Krishnamurti is a Master, Tilopa is a Master – but not teachers. They can be understood only by the topmost. This is the problem – the topmost need not understand. They can go [on] their own. Even without Krishnamurti they will move into the ocean and reach to the other shore; a few days sooner or later, that’s all. The last benchers who cannot move on their own, Patanjali is for them. He starts from the lowest and he reaches to the highest. His help is for all. He is not for the chosen few.

-Osho

From The Mystery Beyond Mind, Discourse #5; Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.3, (previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega).

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

This discourse is the Listening Meditation in the fifth 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 Lotus Remains Untouched – Osho

When the activity of the mind is under control, the mind becomes like pure crystal, reflecting equally, without distortion, the perceiver, the perception and the perceived.

Savitarka samadhi is the samadhi in which the yogi is still unable to differentiate between real knowledge, knowledge based on words and knowledge based on reasoning or sense perceptions, which all remain in the mind in a mixed state.

–Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

What is mind? Mind is not a thing, but an event. A thing has substance in it, an event is just a process. A thing is like the rock; an event is like the wave: it exists but is not substantial. It is just the event between the wind and the ocean, a process, a phenomenon.

This is the first thing to be understood: that mind is a process, like a wave or like a river, but it has no substance in it. If it has substance, then it cannot be dissolved. If it has no substance it can disappear without leaving a single trace behind. When a wave disappears into the ocean, what is left behind? Nothing, not even a trace. So those who have known, they say mind is like a bird flying into the sky – no footprints are left behind, not even a trace. The bird flies but leaves no path, no footprints.

The mind is just a process. In fact, mind doesn’t exist, only thoughts, thoughts moving so fast that you think and feel that something is existing there in continuity. One thought comes, another thought comes, another, and they go on. The gap is so small you cannot see the gap between one thought and another. So two thoughts become joined, they become a continuity, and because of that continuity you think there is a mind. There are thoughts – no mind – just as there are electrons, no matter. Thought is the electron of the mind. Just like a crowd . . . a crowd exists in a sense, doesn’t exist in another; only individuals exist. But many individuals together give the feeling as if they are one. A nation exists and exists not; only individuals are there. Individuals are the electrons of a nation, of a community, of a crowd.

Thoughts exist, mind doesn’t exist. Mind is just the appearance. And when you look into the mind deeper, it disappears. Then there are thoughts, but when the mind has disappeared and individual thoughts exist, many things are immediately solved. First thing: immediately you come to know that thoughts are like clouds – they come and go – and you are the sky. When there is no mind, immediately the perception comes that you are no more involved in the thoughts. Thoughts are there, passing through you like clouds passing through the sky, or the wind passing through the trees. Thoughts are passing through you, and they can pass because you are a vast emptiness. There is no hindrance, no obstacle. No wall exists to prevent them.

You are not a walled phenomenon. Your sky is the infinitely open; thoughts come and go. And once you start feeling that thoughts come and go and you are the watcher, the witness, the mind is in control.

Mind cannot be controlled. In the first place, because it is not, how can you control it? In the second place, who will control the mind? Because nobody exists beyond the mind. and when I say nobody exists, I mean that nobody exists beyond the mind – a nothingness. Who will control the mind? If somebody is controlling the mind, then it will be only a part, a fragment of the mind controlling another fragment of the mind. That is what the ego is.

Mind cannot be controlled in that way. It is not, and there is nobody to control it. The inner emptiness can see but cannot control. It can look but cannot control. But the very look is the control, the very phenomenon of observation, of witnessing, becomes the control because the mind disappears. It is just like in a dark night, you are running fast because you have become afraid of somebody following you, and that somebody is nobody but your own shadow. And the more you run, the more the shadow is closer to you. Howsoever fast you run makes no difference; the shadow is there. Whenever you look back, the shadow is there. That is not the way to escape from it, and that is not the way to control it. You will have to look deeper into the shadow. Stand still and look deeper into the shadow; the shadow disappears because the shadow is not; it is just an absence of light. Mind is nothing but the absence of your presence. When you sit silently, when you look deep in the mind, mind simply disappears. Thoughts will remain, they are existential, but mind will not be found.

But when the mind is gone then a second perception becomes possible: you can see thoughts are not yours. Of course they come, and sometimes they rest a little while in you, and then they go. You may be a resting place, but they don’t originate in you. Have you ever watched that not even a single thought has arisen out of you? Not a single thought has come through your being. They always come from the outside. They don’t belong to you. Rootless, homeless they hover. Sometimes they rest in you, that’s all; a cloud resting on top of a hill. Then they will move on their own; you need not do anything. If you simply watch, control is attained.

The word control is not very good, because words cannot be very good. Words belong to the mind, to the world of thoughts. Words cannot be very, very penetrating; they are shallow. The word control is not good because there is nobody to control, and there is nobody to be controlled. But tentatively, it helps to understand a certain thing which happens. When you look deeply, mind is controlled. Suddenly you have become the master. Thoughts are there but they are no more masters of you, they cannot do anything to you; they simply come and go. You remain untouched just like a lotus flower amidst rainfall: drops of water fall on the petals but they go on slipping, they don’t even touch. The lotus remains untouched.

That’s why in the East lotus became so much significant, became so much symbolic. The greatest symbol that has come out of the East is the lotus. It carries the whole meaning of the eastern consciousness. It says, “Be like a lotus, that’s all. Remain untouched, and you are in control. Remain untouched and you are the master.”

Few things more about the mind before we can enter Patanjali’s sutras. From one standpoint, mind is like waves – a disturbance. When the ocean is calm and quiet, undisturbed, the waves are not there. When the ocean is disturbed in a tide or strong wind, when tremendous waves arise and the whole surface is just a chaos, mind from one standpoint . . . These are all metaphors just to help you to understand a certain quality inside which cannot be said through words. These metaphors are poetic. If you try to understand them with sympathy, you will attain to an understanding. But if you try to understand them logically, you will miss the point. They are metaphors.

Mind is a disturbance of consciousness, just like an ocean with waves is a disturbance. Something foreign has entered – the wind. Something from the outside has happened to the ocean, or to the consciousness – the thoughts, or the wind, and there is a chaos. But the chaos is always on the surface. The waves are always on the surface. There are no waves in the depth – cannot be because in the depth the wind cannot enter. So everything is just on the surface. If you move inwards, control is attained. If you move inwards from the surface you go to the center; suddenly, the surface may still be disturbed but you are not disturbed.

The whole yoga is nothing but centering, moving towards the center, getting rooted there, abiding there. And from there the whole perspective changes. Now still the waves may be there, but they don’t reach you. And now you can see they don’t belong to you, just a conflict on the surface with something foreign. And from the center, when you look, by and by, the conflict ceases. By and by, you relax. By and by, you accept that of course there is strong wind and waves will arise; you are not worried, and when you are not worried even waves can be enjoyed. Nothing is wrong in them.

The problem arises because you are also on the surface. You are in a small boat on the surface and a strong wind comes and it is [high] tide, and the whole ocean goes mad. Of course you are worried; you are scared to death. You are in danger. Any moment the waves can throw your small boat; any moment death can occur. What can you do with your small boat? How can you control? If you start fighting with the waves you will be defeated. Fight won’t help. You will have to accept the waves. In fact, if you can accept the waves and let your boat, howsoever small, move with them not against them, then there is no danger.

That is the meaning of Tilopa’s – “loose and natural”. Waves are there; you simply allow. You simply allow yourself to move with them, not against them. You become part of them. Then tremendous happiness happens. That is the whole art of surfing: moving with the waves – not against, with them – so much so that you are not different from them. Surfing can become a great meditation. It can give you glimpses of the inner because it is not a fight, it is a let-go. Once you know that even waves can be enjoyed – and that can be known when you look at the whole phenomenon from the center.

Just like you are a traveler and clouds have gathered, and there is much lightning, and you have forgotten where you are moving; you have forgotten the path, and you are hurrying towards home. This is what is happening on the surface: a traveler, lost; many clouds, much lightning . . . Soon, there will be tremendous rain. You are seeking home, the safety of the home. Then suddenly you reach home. Now you sit inside, now you wait for the rains, now you can enjoy. Now the lightning has a beauty of its own. It was not so when you were outside, lost in a forest. But now, sitting inside the house, the whole phenomenon is tremendously beautiful. Now the rain comes, and you enjoy. Now the lightning is there, and you enjoy, and great thunder in the clouds, and you enjoy, because now you are safe inside. Once you reach to the center, you start enjoying whatsoever happens on the surface. So the whole thing is not to fight on the surface, but rather slip into the center. Then there is a control, and a control which has not been forced, a control which happens spontaneously when you are centered.

Centering in consciousness is the control of the mind. So don’t try to control the mind. The language can mislead you. Nobody can control, and those who try to control, they will go mad; they will simply go neurotic, because trying to control the mind is nothing but a part of the mind trying to control another part of the mind.

Who are you who is trying to control? You are also a wave, a religious wave of course, trying to control. And there are irreligious waves. There is sex and there is anger and there is jealousy and possessiveness and hatred, and millions of waves, irreligious. And then there are religious waves: meditation, love, compassion. But these are all on the surface, of the surface. And on the surface, religious, irreligious doesn’t make any difference.

Religion is at the center, and in the perspective that happens through the center. Sitting inside your home you look at your own surface. Everything changes because your perspective is new. Suddenly you are control. In fact, you are so much in control that you can leave the surface uncontrolled. This is subtle. You are so much in control, so much rooted, not worried about the surface . . . In fact, you would like the waves and the tides and the storm – it is beautiful, it gives energy, it is a strength – there is nothing to be worried about it; only weaklings worry about thoughts. Only weaklings worry about the mind. Stronger people simply absorb the whole, and they are richer for it. Stronger people simply never reject anything. Rejection is out of weakness – you are afraid. Stronger people would like to absorb everything that life gives. Religious, irreligious, moral, immoral, divine, devil – makes no difference; the stronger person absorbs everything, and he is richer for it. He has a totally different depth ordinary religious people cannot have; they are poor and shallow.

Watch ordinary religious people going to the temple and to the mosque and to the church. You will always find very, very shallow people with no depth. Because they have rejected parts of themselves, they have become crippled. They are in a certain way paralyzed.

Nothing is wrong in the mind; nothing is wrong with thoughts. If anything is wrong, it is remaining on the surface, because then you don’t know the whole and unnecessarily suffer because of the part and the part perception. A whole perception is needed, and that is possible only from the center, because from the center you can look all around in all dimensions, all directions, the whole periphery of your being. And it is vast. In fact, it is the same as the periphery of existence. Once you are centered, by and by you become wider and wider and bigger and bigger, and you end with being brahman, not less than that.

From another standpoint, mind is like the dust a traveler gathers on his clothes. And you have been traveling and traveling and traveling for millions of lives and never taken a bath. Much dust has collected, naturally – nothing wrong in it; it has to be so – layers of dust and you think those layers are your personality. You have become so much identified with them; you have lived with those layers of dust so long they look like your skin. You have become identified.

Mind is the past, the memory, the dust. Everybody has to gather it. If you travel you will gather dust. But no need to be identified with it, no need to become one with it, because if you become one, then you will be in trouble because you are not the dust, you are consciousness. Says Omar Khayyam, “Dust unto dust.” When a man dies, what happens? – dust returns unto dust. If you are just dust, then everything will return to dust, nothing will be left behind. But are you just dust, layers of dust, or is something inside you which is not dust at all, not of the earth at all? That’s your consciousness, your awareness.

Awareness is your being, consciousness is your being, and the dust that awareness collects around it is your mind. There are two ways to deal with this dust. The ordinary religious way is to clean the clothes, rub your body hard. But those methods cannot help much. Howsoever you clean your clothes, the clothes have become so dirty they are beyond redemption; you cannot clean them. On the contrary, whatsoever you do may make them more unclean. […]

Religious people supply you [with] soaps and chemical solutions; how to wipe, how to wash the dirt, but then those solutions leave their own stains. That’s why an immoral person can become moral, but remains dirty, now in a moral way, but remains dirty. Even sometimes the situation is worse than before.

An immoral man is in many ways innocent, less egoistic. A moral man has all the immorality inside the mind. And new things that he has gathered: those are the moralistic, the puritan, egoistic attitudes. He feels superior. He feels he is the chosen one and everybody else is condemned to hell. Only he is going to heaven. And all the immorality remains inside, because you cannot control mind from the surface – there is no way. It simply doesn’t happen that way. Only one control exists, and that is the perception from the center.

Mind is like a dust gathered through millions of journeys. The real religious standpoint, the radical religious standpoint against the ordinary, is to simply throw the clothes. Don’t bother to wash them, they cannot be washed. Simply move like a snake out of his old skin and don’t even look back. This is exactly what yoga is: how to get rid of your personalities. Those personalities are the clothes.

This word “personality” is very interesting. It comes from a Greek root persona. It means the mask that actors used in ancient Greece, in drama, to hide the face. That mask is called persona, and you have personality out of it. Personality is the mask, not you. Personality, a false face, to show to others. And through many lives and many experiences you have created many personalities – clothes; they have all become dirty. You have used them too much, and because of them the original face is completely lost.

You don’t know what your original face is. You are deceiving others and you have become a victim of your own deceptions. Drop all personalities, because if you cling to the personality you will remain on the surface. Drop all personalities and be just natural, and then you can flow towards the center. And once from the center you look then there is no mind. In the beginning thoughts continue, but by and by, without your cooperation, they come less and less. And when all your cooperation is lost, when you simply don’t cooperate with them, they stop coming to you. Not that they are no more; they are there, but they don’t come to you.

Thoughts come only as invited guests. They never come uninvited, remember this. Sometimes you think, “This thought I never invited,” but you must be wrong. In some way, sometime – you may have forgotten about it completely – you must have invited it. Thoughts never come uninvited. You first invite them; only then they come. When you don’t invite, sometimes just because of old habit, because you have been an old friend, they may knock at your door. But if you don’t cooperate, by and by they forget about you, they don’t come to you. And when thoughts stop coming on their own, this is the control. Not that you control thoughts – simply you reach to an inner shrine of your being, and thoughts are controlled by themselves.

From still another standpoint, mind is the past, the memory, all the experiences accumulated. In a sense, all that you have done, all that you have thought, all that you desired, all that you dreamed – everything, your total past, your memory. Memory is mind. And unless you get rid of memory, you will not be able to control mind.

How to get rid of memory? It is always there following you. In fact, you are the memory, so how to get rid of it? Who are you except your memories? When I ask, “Who are you?” you tell me your name. That is your memory. Your parents gave you that name some time back. I ask you, “Who are you?” and you talk about your family: your father, your mother. That is a memory. I ask you, “Who are you?” and you tell me about your education, your degrees: that you have done the degree of Master of Arts, or you are a Ph.D., or you are an engineer or an architect. That is a memory.

When I ask you, “Who are you?” if you really look inside, your only answer can be, “I don’t know.” Whatsoever you will say will be the memory, not you. The only real authentic answer can be, “I don’t know,” because to know oneself is the last thing. I can answer who I am, but I will not answer. You cannot answer, “Who are you?” but you are ready with the answer.

Those who know, they keep silent about this. Because if all the memory is discarded, and all the language is discarded, then who I am cannot be said. I can look into you; I can give you a gesture; I can be with you with my total being – that is my answer. But the answer cannot be given in words because whatsoever is given in words will be part of memory, part of mind, not of consciousness.

How to get rid of the memories? Watch them, witness them. And always remember that “This has happened to me, but this is not me.” Of course, you were born in a certain family, but this is not you; it has happened to you, an event outside of you. Of course, somebody has given a name to you. It has its utility, but the name is not you. Of course, you have a form, but the form is not you. The form is just the house you happen to be in. The form is just the body that you happen to be in. And the body is given to you by your parents. It is a gift, but not you.

Watch and discriminate. This is what in the East they call vivek, discrimination: you discriminate continuously. Keep on discriminating – a moment comes when you have eliminated all that you are not. Suddenly, in that state, you for the first time face yourself, you encounter your own being. Go on cutting all identities that you are not: the family, the body, the mind. In that emptiness, when everything that was not you has been thrown out, suddenly your being surfaces. For the first time you encounter yourself, and that encounter becomes the control.

The word “control” is really ugly. I would like not to use it, but I cannot do anything because Patanjali uses it – because in the very word it seems somebody is controlling somebody else. Patanjali knows, and later on he will say that you attain to real samadhi only when there is no control and no controller. Now we should enter into the sutras.

When the activity of the mind is under control, the mind becomes like pure crystal, reflecting equally, without distortion, the perceiver, the perception and the perceived.

When the activity of the mind is under control . . . Now you understand what I mean by “under control”: that you are at the center and you look at the mind from there; that you are sitting inside the house and you look at the clouds, and the thunder, and the lightning and the rain from there; that you have dropped all your clothes – dusty clothes and dirty clothes – because in fact there are no clothes, only layers of dirt, so you cannot clean them. You have thrown them out, thrown them away. You are simply naked and nude in your being. Or, you have eliminated all that with which you have become identified. Now you don’t say who you are: form, name, family, body, mind, everything has been eliminated. Only that is there which cannot be eliminated.

That is the method of the Upanishads. They call it neti-neti. They say, “I am not this, nor that,” and they go on and on and on . . . A moment comes when only the witness has remained, and the witness cannot be denied. That is the last stratum of your being, the very core of it. You cannot deny it because who will deny it. Now two doesn’t exist, only one. Then there is control. Then the activity of the mind is under control.

So it is not like a small child forced by the parents into the corner, and they have been told, “Sit there silently” – looks under control, but he is not. He looks under control, but he is restless, forced, but inside – great turmoil. […]

You can force your mind to sit outwardly; inside it will go on running. In fact, it will run faster because mind resists control. Everybody resists control. No, that is not the way. You can kill yourself in that way, but you cannot attain to the eternal life. That is a sort of crippling. When Buddha is sitting silently there is no inward running, no. In fact, inside he has become silent, and that silence has overflown to his outside, not the reverse.

You try to force yourself to be silent on the outside, and you think that by silencing the outside, the inner will become silent. You simply don’t understand the science of silence. Inside if you are silent, the outside will be overflowed by it. It simply follows the inside. The periphery follows the center, but you cannot make the center follow the periphery – that is impossible. So always remember the whole religious search is from the inside towards the outside, and not vice-versa.

When the activity of the mind is under control, the mind becomes like pure crystal . . .

When there is perfect silence, you are rooted and centered inside, just watching whatsoever is happening. The birds are singing, the noise will be heard; the traffic is there on the road, the noise will be heard. And just the same, your inner traffic of the mind is there – words, thoughts, an inner talk. The traffic will be heard but you sit silently, not doing anything – a subtle indifference. You just look indifferently. You don’t bother this way or that; whether thoughts come or not, it is the same for you. You are neither interested for nor interested against. You simply sit and the traffic of the mind goes on. If you can sit indifferently . . . will be difficult, will take time – but once you know the knack of being indifferent . . . It is not a technique; it is a knack. A technique can be learned, a knack cannot be learned. You have simply to sit and feel it. A technique can be taught, a knack cannot be taught; you have simply to sit and feel. Someday in the right moment when you are silent, suddenly you know how it happened, how you became indifferent. Even for a single moment the traffic was there and you were indifferent, and suddenly the distance was vast between you and your mind.  The mind was at the other end of the world. That distance shows that you were at the center at that moment. If you have come to feel the knack, then anytime, anywhere, you can simply slip out to the center. You can drop in and immediately an indifference, a vast indifference surrounds you. In that indifference you remain untouched by the mind. You become the master.

Indifference is the way to become the master, and the mind is controlled. Then what happens?

When you are at the center, the confusion of the mind disappears. The confusion is because you are at the periphery. Mind is not really the confusion; mind plus you at the periphery is the confusion. When you move inwards, by and by, you see that mind is losing its confusion. Things are settling, things are falling in line. A certain order arises.

 . . . the mind becomes like pure crystal . . .

All the disturbance, confusion, crisscrossing thought currents, they all settle. This is very difficult to understand that because of you at the periphery is the whole confusion. And you, in your wisdom, are trying to settle the confusion by remaining there at the periphery. […]

Nobody can bring order to the mind. The very bringing of the order creates chaos. If you can watch and wait, and you can look indifferently, things settle by themselves. There is a certain law: things cannot remain unsettled for a long time. This law you have to remember. It is one of the foundations, very fundamental, that things cannot remain in an unsettled state for long because the unsettled state is not natural. It is unnatural. A settled state of things is natural; an unsettled state of things is not natural. So the unnatural can happen for the time being, but it cannot remain forever. In your hurry, in your impatience, you may make things worse. […]

Nature abhors chaos. Nature loves order. Nature is all for order, so chaos can only be a temporary state. If you can understand this, then don’t do anything with the mind. Let this mad mind be left to itself. You simply watch. Don’t pay any attention. Remember: in watching and in paying attention there is a difference. When you pay attention, you are too much interested. When you simply watch, you are indifferent.

Upeksha, Buddha calls it: indifference – absolute total indifference. Just sitting by the side, and the river flows by and things settle, and dirt goes back to the bottom, and the dry leaves have flown. Suddenly, the stream is crystal clear.

This is what Patanjali says:

When the activity of the mind is under control, the mind becomes like pure crystal . . .

And when the mind becomes like pure crystal, three things are reflected in it.

. . . reflecting equally, without distortion, the perceiver, the perception, and the perceived.

. . . the object, the subject, and the relation between the two.

When the mind is perfectly clear, has become an order, is no more a confusion, things have settled, three things are reflected in it. It becomes a mirror, a three-dimensional mirror. The outside world, the world of objects is reflected. The inside world, the world of subjectivity, consciousness, is reflected. And the relationship – and between the two, the perception . . . and without distortion.

It is because of you meddling too much in the mind that the distortion comes in. What is the distortion? Mind is a simple mechanism, just like the eyes; you look through the eyes and the world is reflected. But the eyes have only one dimension: they can reflect only the world; they cannot reflect you. The mind is a very three-dimensional phenomenon, very deep. It reflects all, and without distortion. Ordinarily it distorts. Whenever you see a thing, if you are not different from the mind the thing will be distorted. You will see something else. You will mix your perception in it, your ideas. You will not look at it in a purity of vision. You will look with the ideas, and your ideas will become projected on it. […]

There have existed tribes which don’t value gold at all. When they don’t value gold at all, they are not gold obsessed. Then the whole world is there, gold-obsessed: just the idea and the gold becomes very valuable.

In the world of things, reality, nothing is more valuable or less valuable. Valuation is brought by the mind, by you. Nothing is beautiful, nothing is ugly. Things are as they are. In their suchness they exist. But when you are on the surface and get mixed with the ideas, and you start saying, “This is my idea of beauty. This is my idea of truth” – then everything is distorted.

When you move to the center and the mind is left alone, and you watch [look] from the center at the mind, you are no more identified with it. By and by, all ideas disappear. Mind becomes crystal clear. And in the mirror, the three-dimensional mirror of the mind, the whole is reflected: the object, the subject, and the perception, the perceiver, the perception, and the perceived.

Savitarka samadhi is the samadhi in which the yogi is still unable to differentiate between real knowledge, knowledge based on words and knowledge based on reasoning or sense perceptions, which all remain in the mind in a mixed state.

There are two types of samadhi: one Patanjali calls savitarka, the other he calls nirvikalpa, or nirvitarka. These are two states. First one achieves savitarka samadhi, that is, the logical mind is still functioning – samadhi, yet based on the rational attitude – the reason is still functioning, you are making discriminations. This is not the highest samadhi, just the first step. But that too is very, very difficult because that too will need a little going towards the center.

Just for example: the periphery is there, where you are right now, and the center is there, where I am right now, and between the two, just in the middle, is savitarka samadhi. It means you have moved away from the surface, but you have not reached the center yet. You have moved away from the surface, but still the center is far away. Just in the middle you are, still something of the old is functioning, and something of the new has entered – halfway. And what will be the situation of this halfway state of consciousness?

Savitarka samadhi is the samadhi in which the yogi is still unable to differentiate between real knowledge . . .

He will not be able yet to differentiate what is real because the real can be known only from the center. There is no other way to know it. He cannot know what real knowledge is. Something of the real is filtering in, because he has moved from the surface, has come closer to the center, not yet centered, yet has come closer. Something of the center is filtering in – some perceptions, some glimpses of the center, but the old mind still is there, not completely gone. A distance is there but the old mind still goes on functioning. The yogi is still unable to differentiate between the real knowledge . . .

Real knowledge is that knowledge when the mind does not distort at all, when the mind has completely disappeared in a sense. It has become so transparent that whether it is there or not makes no difference. In the mid-state, the yogi is in a very deep confusion. The confusion comes: something from the real, something from his knowledge that he has gathered in the past from words, scriptures, teachers – that too is there. Something from his own reasoning what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false, and something from his sense perceptions – eyes, ears, nose – everything is there, mixed.

This is the state where the yogi can go mad. If there is nobody to take care in this state, the yogi can go mad because so many dimensions meeting and such a great confusion and chaos . . . It is a greater chaos than he was ever in when he was on the surface, because something new has come in.

From the center now some glimpses are coming towards him, and he cannot know whether it is coming from the knowledge that he has gathered from the scriptures. Sometimes he suddenly feels aham brahamasmi “I am God.” Now he is unable to differentiate whether this is coming from the Upanishad that he has been reading, or he himself has reasoned it out. It is a rational conclusion that, “I am part of the whole and the whole is God, so of course I am God” . . . whether it is a logical syllogism or it is coming from sense perceptions.

Because sometimes, when you are very quiet and the doors of the senses are clear, this feeling arises of being a god. Listening to music, suddenly you are no more a human being. If your ears are ready and if you have the musical perception, suddenly you are elevated to a different plane. Making love to a woman you love – suddenly, in the peak of the orgasm, you feel you have become a god. It can happen through sense perceptions. It can happen through reasoning. It may be coming from the Upanishads, from the scriptures you have been reading, or it may be coming from the center. And the man who is in the middle doesn’t know from where it is coming. From all the directions millions of things are happening – strange, unknown, known. One can be in a real mess.

That’s why schools are needed where many people are working. Because these are not the only three points. Between the periphery and the center, there are many. A school means where many people of many categories live together. Just a school: the first-grade people are there, the second grade people are there, the third-grade people are there; the primary school, the middle school, the high school, then the university. A perfect school is from the kindergarten to the university. Somebody exists there at the very end, on the center, who becomes the center of the school.

And then many people, because they can be helpful . . . you can help somebody who is just behind you. A person from the high school can come to the primary school and teach. A small boy from the primary school can go to the kindergarten and help. A school means: from the periphery to the center, there are many stages, many points. A school means: where all types of people exist together in a deep harmony, as a family from the very first to the very last, from the beginning to the very end, from the alpha to the omega. Much help is possible that way, because you can help somebody who is behind you. You can say to him, “Don’t be worried. Just go on. This comes and settles by itself. Don’t get too much involved in it. Remain indifferent. It comes and it goes – somebody to stretch a hand to help you. And a Master is needed who can look through all the stages, from the very top to the very valley, who can have a total perception of all the possibilities.

Otherwise, in this stage of savitarka samadhi, many become mad. Or, many become so scared they run away from the center and start clinging to the periphery, because there is at least some type of order. At least the unknown doesn’t enter there, the strange doesn’t come there. You are familiar; strangers don’t knock at your door.

But one who has reached to savitarka samadhi if he goes back to the periphery, nothing will be solved, he can never be the same again; he can never belong to the periphery now, so that is not of much help. He will never be a part of the periphery. And he will be there more and more confused, because once you have known something, how can you help yourself not to know it? Once you have known, you have known. You can avoid, you can close your eyes, but it is still there, and it will haunt you your whole life.

If the school is not there and a Master is not there you will become a very problematic case. In the world you cannot belong, the market doesn’t make any sense to you; and beyond the world you are afraid to move.

Savitarka samadhi is the samadhi in which the yogi is still unable to differentiate between real knowledge, knowledge based on words and knowledge based on reasoning or sense perceptions, which all remain in the mind in a mixed state.

Nirvitarka samadhi is reaching to the center: logic disappears, scriptures are no more meaningful, sense perceptions cannot deceive you. When you are at the center, suddenly everything is self-evidently true. This word has to be understood – “self-evidently true”. Truths are there on the periphery, but they are never self-evident. Some proof is needed, some reasoning is needed. If you say something, you have to prove it. If on the periphery you say, “God is,” you will have to prove it, to yourself, to others. On the center God is, self-evidently. You don’t need any proof. What proof is needed when your eyes are open and you can see the sun rising? But for a man who is blind, proof is needed. What proof is needed when you are in love? You know it is there; it is self-evident. Others may demand proof. How can you give them any proof? The man at the center becomes the proof; he doesn’t give any proof. Whatsoever he knows is self-evident. It is so. He has not reached towards it as a conclusion of a reasoning. It is not a syllogism; he has not concluded; simply it is so. He has known.

That’s why in the Upanishads there are no proofs, in Patanjali there are no proofs. Patanjali simply describes, gives no proof. This is the difference: when a man knows, he simply describes; when a man doesn’t know, first he proves that it is so. Those who have known, they simply give the description of that unknown. They don’t give any proofs. […]

Look at the Upanishads – not a single proof exists. They simply say, “God is.” If you want to know, you can know. If you don’t want to know, it is your choice. But there is no proof for it.

That state is nirvitarka samadhi, samadhi without any reasoning. That samadhi becomes for the first time existential. But that also is not the last. One more final step exists. We will be talking about it later on.

-Osho

From The Mystery Beyond Mind, Discourse #3; Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.3, (previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega).

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

This discourse is the Listening Meditation in the fourth 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 Switchover is Absolutely Sudden – Jean Klein

When you have a glimpse of reality, it is already in a certain way in your background. You see things less and less personally. There comes the quality of global vision, where there is no choice, no selection. You see things more and more as they are, not as you wish them to be, but as they really are. You live in this perspective, you love it, it is a jewel you wear, maybe several times a day. Then there comes a moment in your life that even this geometrical representation, the perspective, dissolves in your real nature. And then there is no return. This switchover is absolutely sudden, instantaneous. You live now without anticipation, without end-gaining. You live absolutely in the now. Thinking is a practical, useful tool which you use when you need it, but you no longer think when there is no need to think. There is no more daydreaming. You enjoy really freedom from thought. Oh! You will become a happy man! What more do you want?

-Jean Klein

From The book of Listening, pp. 17-18

You can read more from Jean Klein here.

 

Enlightenment Happens Suddenly, But Understanding Takes Time- Osho

You said the ego can be dropped this very moment. Can the ego also be dropped progressively?

The dropping always happens in the moment and always in this moment. There is no progressive, gradual process for it. There cannot be. The happening is instantaneous. You can’t get ready for it, you can’t prepare for it, because whatsoever you do – and I say whatsoever – will strengthen the ego. Any gradual process will be an effort, something done on your part. So you will be strengthened more and more through it. You will become stronger. Everything gradual helps the ego. Only something absolutely non-gradual, something like a jump, not like a process, something discontinuous with the past, not in continuity with it – only then the ego drops.

The problem arises because we cannot understand what this ego is. The ego is the past, the continuity, all that you have done, all that you have accumulated, all the karmas, all the conditionings, all the desires, all the dreams of the past. That whole past is the ego. And if you think in terms of gradual process, you bring the past in. The dropping is non-gradual, sudden. It is a discontinuity – the past is no more, the future is no more. You are left alone here and now. Then the ego cannot exist.

 The ego can exist only through the memory: who you are, from where you come, to whom you belong, the country, the race, the religion, the family, the tradition, and all the hurts, wounds, pleasures – all that has happened in the past. All that has happened is the ego. And you are that to whom all this has happened. This distinction has to be understood: you are that to whom all has happened, and the ego is that which has happened. The ego is around you. You are in the center, egoless.

A child is born absolutely fresh and young – no past, no ego. That’s why children are so beautiful. They don’t have any past. They are young and fresh. They cannot say I, because from where will they bring the I? The I has to develop gradually. They will get educated, they will get awards, punishments, they will be appreciated, condemned – then the I will gather.

A child is beautiful because the ego is not there. An old man becomes ugly, not because of old age, but because of too much past, too much of the ego. An old man can also become again beautiful, even more beautiful than a child, if he can drop the ego. Then there is a second childhood, then a rebirth.

This is the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus. It is not an historical fact, it is a parable. Jesus is crucified and then he resurrects. The man who was crucified is no more; that was the son of the carpenter, Jesus. Now Jesus is dead, crucified. A new entity arises out of that. Out of this death a new life is born. This is Christ – not the son of a particular carpenter in Bethlehem, not a Jew, not even a man. This is Christ, something new, egoless.

And the same will happen to you whenever your ego is on the cross. Whenever your ego is crucified, there is a resurrection, a rebirth. You are born again. And this childhood is eternal, because this is a rebirth of the spirit, not of the body. Now you will never become old. Always and always you will be fresh and young – as fresh as the dew-drop in the morning, as fresh as the first star in the night. You will always remain fresh, young, a child, innocent – because this is a resurrection of the spirit. This always happens in a moment.

Ego is time – the more time, the more ego. Ego needs time. If you penetrate deeply you may even be able to conceive that time exists only because of the ego. Time is not part of the physical world around you, it is part of the psychic world within you, the mind-world. Time exists just as a space for the ego to evolve and to grow. Room is needed; time gives the room.

If it is said to you that this is the last moment of your life, next moment you are going to be shot dead, suddenly time disappears. You feel very uneasy. You are still alive, but suddenly you feel as if you are dying. And you can’t think what to do. Even to think becomes difficult, because even for thinking, time is needed, future is needed. There is no tomorrow, then where to think, how to desire, how to hope? There is no time. Time is finished.

 The greatest agony that can happen to a man happens when his death is fixed and he cannot avoid it; it is certain. A person who is sentenced, imprisoned, waiting for his death – he cannot do anything about it, death is fixed, after a certain period he will die, beyond that time, there is no tomorrow for him – now he cannot desire, he cannot think, he cannot project, he cannot even dream. The barrier is always there. Then much agony follows. That agony is for the ego, because ego cannot exist without time. Ego breathes in time. Time is breath for the ego. The more time, the more possibility for the ego.

In the East much has been worked out, much has been done to understand the ego, much probing has been done. And one of the findings is that unless time drops from you, ego will not drop. If tomorrow exists, the ego will exist. If there is no tomorrow, how can you pull on the ego? It will be just like pulling a boat without the river. That will become a burden. A river is needed, then the boat can function.

The river of time is needed for the ego. That’s why the ego always thinks in terms of gradual, in terms of degrees. The ego says: Okay, enlightenment is possible – but time is needed, because you will have to work for it, prepare, get ready. And this is a very logical thing! For everything time is needed. If you sow a seed, time is needed for the tree to grow. If a child is to be born, if a child is to be created, time is needed. The womb will need time. The child will have to grow. Everything grows around you. For growth, time is needed. So it seems logical that spiritual growth will also need time.

But this is the point to be understood: spiritual growth is not really a growth like a seed. The seed has to grow to become a tree. Between the seed and the tree there is a gap. That gap has to be traveled, there is distance. You don’t grow like a seed. You are already the growth. It is just a revelation. There is no distance between you as you are and you as you will be. There is no distance! The ideal, the perfect, is already there.

So it is not really a question of growth, but just a question of unveiling. It is a discovery. Something is hidden – you pull away the screen, and it is there. It is just as if you are sitting with closed eyes, the sun is there on the horizon, but you are in darkness. Suddenly you open the eyes and it is day, it is light.

The spiritual growth is not really a growth. The word is erroneous. Spiritual growth is a revelation. Something that was hidden becomes unhidden. Something that was already there, you realize it, that it is there. Something that you had never missed, simply forgotten, you remember it. That’s why mystics go on using the word remembrance. They say the divine is not an achievement, it is simply a remembrance. Something you have forgotten, you remember.

Really, no time is needed. But the mind says, the ego says, for everything time is needed, for everything to grow time is needed. And if you become a victim of this logical thought, then you will never achieve it. Then you will go on postponing. You will say tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. And it will never come because tomorrow never comes.

 If you can understand what I am saying, that the ego can be dropped this very moment, and if it is true, then the question arises: Why is it not dropping? Why can’t you drop it? If there is no question of gradual growth, then why are you not dropping it? Because you don’t want to drop it. This will shock you, because you go on thinking that you want to drop it. Reconsider it, think again. You don’t want to drop it, hence it continues. It is not a question of time. Because you don’t want to drop it, nothing can be done!

Mysterious are the ways of the mind. You think that you want to drop it, and deep down you know you don’t want to drop it. You may want to polish it a little more, you may want it to be more refined, but you don’t really want to drop it. If you want to drop it there is no one who is preventing. No barrier exists. Just for the wanting it can be dropped. But if you don’t want to drop it nothing can be done. Even a thousand Buddhas working on you will fail, because nothing can be done from the outside.

Have you really thought about it, have you ever meditated on it, whether you want to drop it? Do you really want to become a non-being, a nothing? Even in your religious projections you want to be something, you want to achieve something, reach somewhere, be something. Even when you think of being humble, your humility, your humbleness, is just a secret hiding-place for the ego and nothing else.

Look at so-called humble people. They say they are humble and they will try to prove that they are the most humble in their town, in their city, in their locality – the most humble. And if you argue and if you say: No, somebody else is more humble than you, they will feel hurt. Who is feeling hurt?

I was just reading about one Christian saint. He says every day to his god in his prayer: I am the most wicked person on this earth, the greatest sinner. Apparently, he is a very humble man, but he is not. He says the greatest sinner on the earth, and if even God is going to dispute it, he will argue. The interest, the deep interest, is in being the greatest, not in being the sinner. You can be a sinner if you are allowed to be the greatest sinner. You can enjoy it. Greatest sinner – then you become a peak. Virtue or sin is immaterial. You must be someone. Whatsoever the reason for it, your ego must be at the top.

George Bernard Shaw is reported to have said, “I would rather be first in hell than second in heaven. Hell is not a bad place if you are the first and foremost. Even heaven will look dull if you are just standing somewhere in a queue, a nobody.” And Bernard Shaw is right. This is how the human mind functions.

Nobody wants to drop the ego. Otherwise, there is no problem – you can simply drop it right now. And if you feel that time is needed, then time is needed only for your understanding that you are clinging to it. And the moment you can understand that it is your clinging, the thing will happen.

You may take many lives to understand this simple fact. You have already taken many lives, and you have not yet understood. This looks very weird. There is something which is a burden to you, which gives you hell, a continuous hell, but still you cling to it. There must be some deep reason for it, a very deep-rooted cause. I would like to talk about it a little. You may become aware.

 The way the human mind is it will always choose occupation rather than being unoccupied. Even if the occupation is painful, even if it is a suffering, the mind will choose to be occupied rather than to be unoccupied – because unoccupied you start feeling that you are dissolving.

Psychologists say that when people retire from their work, their job, their service or business, they die soon. Their life is reduced immediately by almost ten years. Before their death they start dying. There is no more occupation, they are unoccupied. When you are unoccupied you start feeling meaningless, futile. You start feeling that you are not needed, that without you the world can go on easily. When you are occupied, you feel that the world cannot continue without you, that you are a very essential part of it, very significant – without you everything will stop.

If you are unoccupied, suddenly you become aware that without you the world goes on beautifully. Nothing is changing. You have been discarded. You are thrown on the junk pile. You are not needed. The moment you feel you are not needed; the ego becomes uneasy – because it exists only when you are needed. So, all around, the ego goes on forcing this attitude on everybody: You are a must, you are needed, without you nothing can happen, without you the world will dissolve.

Unoccupied, you come to realize that the game continues. You are not an essential part. You can be discarded easily. Nobody will bother about you. Nobody will think about you. Rather, they may even feel relieved. That shatters the ego. So people want occupation, something or other, but they have to remain occupied. They must continue the illusion that they are needed.

Meditation is an unoccupied state of mind. It is a deep retirement. It is not just a superficial retirement like going to the Himalayas. That may not be a retirement at all, because, again, you can become occupied in the Himalayas. You can create fantasies there that you are saving the world. Sitting in the Himalayas meditating, you are saving the world from a third war; or because you are creating such vibrations, the world is reaching towards a utopia, a peaceful state of society. And you can enjoy this occupation there. Nobody is going to argue because you are alone. Nobody is going to dispute the fact that you are in illusion or a hallucinatory state. You can get really involved with it. The ego will assert itself again in a subtle new way.

Meditation is not a superficial retirement. It is a deep, intimate, real retirement, a withdrawal – a withdrawal from occupation. It is not that you will not be occupied, you can continue whatsoever you are doing, but you withdraw yourself and your investment in occupation. Now you start feeling that this constant hankering after being needed is foolish, stupid. The world can continue quite well without you. And there is no depression in it. It is good. So far, so good . . . the world can continue without you. This can become a freedom if you understand. If you don’t understand, then you feel you are being shattered.

So people continue to be occupied, and the ego gives them the greatest occupation possible. Twenty-four hours, the ego gives them occupation. They are thinking how to become a member of parliament. They are thinking – how to become a deputy minister and a minister and a prime minister, and how to become a president. The ego goes on and on and on. It gives you a constant occupation – how to achieve more riches, how to create a kingdom. The ego gives you dreams, continuous inner occupation. And you feel much is going on. Unoccupied, suddenly you become aware of inner emptiness. These dreams fill the inner emptiness.

Now psychologists say that a man can live without food for at least ninety days, but he cannot live without dreaming for ninety days. He will go mad. If dreaming is not allowed within three weeks you will go mad. Without food, three weeks will not harm you – it may even be good for your health. Three weeks without food, a good fast, will rejuvenate your whole system, you will be more alive and young. But three weeks of non-dreaming . . . you will go mad.

Dreaming must fulfill some deep-rooted need. The need is that it gives you occupation; without real occupation it gives you occupation. You can sit and dream and do whatsoever you like, and the whole world moves according to you – in your dreams at least. Nobody creates a problem. You can kill anybody, you can murder. You can change as you like. You are the master there.

The ego feels most vital while dreaming, because there is nobody who can antagonize you, who can say: No, this is wrong. You are whole and sole. Whatsoever you want, you create. Whatsoever you don’t want, you destroy. You are absolutely powerful. You are omnipotent in your dreams.

Dreams stop only when ego drops. So this is the sign, really; in old yoga scriptures, this is the sign of a man who has become enlightened: he cannot dream. Dreaming stops because there is no need. It was an ego-need. You want to be occupied. That’s why you cannot drop the ego.

Unless you are ready to be empty, unoccupied, unless you are ready to be nobody, unless you are ready to enjoy and celebrate life even if you are not needed, ego cannot be dropped. You have a need to be needed. Somebody must need you – then you feel good. If more and more people need you, you feel better and better. That’s why leadership is so much enjoyed, because so many people need you. A leader can become very humble. There is no need to assert his ego. His ego is already so deeply fulfilled because so many people need him, so many people depend on him. He has become the life of so many people, so he can be humble, he can afford to be humble.

You must remember this fact that people who assert their egos too much are always people who cannot influence others. Then they become assertive because that is their only way to say: I am somebody. If they can influence people, if they can persuade, they will never be assertive. They will be very humble – apparently, at least. They will not look egoistic, because, in a very subtle way, so many people depend on them – they have become significant, their life appears meaningful to them. If your ego is your meaning, if your ego is your significance, how can you drop it?

Listening to me, you start thinking to drop it. But just by thinking you cannot drop the ego. You have to come to understand the roots – where it is, where it exists, why it exists. These are the unconscious forces working within you without your knowledge. They have to be made conscious. You have to bring all the roots of your ego out of the soil and earth so you can look and see.

If you can remain unoccupied, if you can remain satisfied without being needed, the ego can drop this very moment. But these ifs are big. Meditation will prepare you for these big ifs. The happening will happen in a moment, but the understanding will take time. It is just like when you heat water. It becomes hotter and hotter and hotter; then, at a particular degree, at one hundred degrees, it starts evaporating. Evaporation happens in a single moment. It is not gradual, it is sudden. From water to vapor there is a jump. Suddenly the water disappears, but time is involved because the water has to be heated up to boiling point. Evaporation happens suddenly, but heating takes time. Understanding is just like heating. It takes time. Dropping of the ego happens like evaporation. It happens suddenly.

So don’t try to drop the ego. Rather, try to deepen your understanding. Don’t try to make water change into vapor. Heat it. The second thing will follow automatically, it will happen.

Grow in understanding. Make it more intense, more focused. Bring all your energy to understand the phenomenon of your being, your ego, your mind, your unconscious. Become more and more alert. And whatsoever happens, make it a point to try to understand it also. Somebody insults you and you feel anger. Don’t miss this opportunity; try to understand why, why this anger. And don’t make it a philosophical thing. Don’t go to the library to consult about anger. Anger is happening to you – it is an experience, a live experience. Focus your whole attention on it and try to understand why it is happening to you. It is not a philosophical problem. No Freud is to be consulted about it. There is no need! It is just foolish to consult somebody else while anger is happening to you. You can touch it. You can taste it. You will be burned by it.

Try to understand why it is happening, from where it is coming, where the roots are, how it happens, how it functions, how it overpowers you, how in anger you become mad. Anger has happened before, it is happening now, but now add a new element to it, the element of understanding – and then the quality will change. Then, by and by, you will see that the more you understand anger, the less it happens. And when you understand it perfectly, it disappears. Understanding is like heat. When the heat comes to a particular point – one hundred degrees – the water disappears. Sex is there – try to understand it. The more there is understanding, the less you will be sexual. And a moment will come when understanding is perfect – and sex disappears.

This is my criterion: whatsoever the phenomenon of inner energy, if it disappears through understanding, it is sin; if through understanding it deepens, it is virtue. The more you understand, the wrong will disappear and the right will become more rooted. Sex will disappear and love will deepen. Anger will disappear and compassion will deepen. Greed will disappear, sharing will deepen.

 So whatsoever disappears through understanding is wrong; whatsoever becomes more rooted is right. And this is how I define good and evil, virtue and sin – punya and paap. A holy man is a man of understanding, nothing else. A sinner is a man of no understanding, that’s all. Between a holy man and a sinner the distinction is not of sin and holiness, it is of understanding.

Understanding works as a heating process. A moment comes, a right moment, when the heating has come to the boiling-point. Suddenly the ego drops. You cannot drop it directly – you can prepare the situation in which it happens. That situation will take time.

Two schools have always existed. One school is of sudden enlightenment which says enlightenment happens suddenly, it is non-temporal. Another school, just contradicting the first, is of gradual enlightenment; it says enlightenment comes gradually, nothing happens suddenly. And both are right, because both have chosen one part of the phenomenon.

The gradual school has chosen the first part, the understanding part. They say it has to be through time, understanding will come through time. And they are right! They say you need not worry about the sudden. You simply follow the process, and if the water is heated rightly it will evaporate. You need not bother about evaporation. You simply leave it completely out of your mind. You simply heat the water.

The other school, quite the opposite, which says enlightenment is sudden, has taken the end part. It says the first thing is not very essential: the real thing is that that explosion happens in a no-time gap. The first thing is just the periphery. The real, the second thing, is the center.

But I tell you both are right. Enlightenment happens suddenly. It has always happened suddenly. But understanding takes time. Both are right and both can be interpreted wrongly also. You can play tricks with yourself. You can deceive yourself. If you don’t want to do anything, it is beautiful to believe in sudden enlightenment. Then you say: “There is no need to do anything. If it happens suddenly, it will happen suddenly. What can I do? I can simply wait.” That may be a self-deception. Because of this, in Japan particularly, religion simply disappeared.

Japan has a long tradition of sudden enlightenment. Zen says enlightenment is sudden. Because of this, the whole country became irreligious. By and by, people came to believe that sudden enlightenment is the only possibility: Nothing can be done about it – whenever it is going to happen, it will happen. If it is going to happen, it will happen. If it is not going to happen, it will not happen. And we cannot do anything, so why bother?

In the East, Japan is the most materialistic country. In the East, Japan exists as a part of the West. This is strange, because Japan has one of the most beautiful traditions of dhyan, chan – Zen. Why did it disappear? It disappeared because of this concept of sudden enlightenment. People started deceiving themselves. In India, another phenomenon has happened . . . and that’s why I go on saying again and again that the human mind is so deceptive and cunning. You have to be constantly alert, otherwise you will be deceived.

In India, we have another tradition, that of gradual enlightenment. That’s what yoga means. You have to work for it, work hard through many lives. Discipline is needed, work is needed, and unless you work hard you will not achieve it. So, it is a long process, a very long process – so long that India says one life is not enough, you will need many lives. Nothing is wrong with this. As far as understanding is concerned, it is true. But then India believed that if it is going to be so long then there is no hurry. Then why be in such a hurry? Then enjoy the world…there is no hurry and there is enough time. And it is such a long process that you cannot achieve it today. And if you cannot achieve it today then the interest is lost. Nobody is so keen that he can wait for many lives. He will simply forget it. The gradual concept has destroyed India; the sudden concept has destroyed Japan.

To me, both are true, because both are half-parts of a whole process. And you have to be constantly alert so that you are not deceiving yourself. It will look contradictory, but this is what I would like to say to you: It can happen this very moment, but this very moment may take many lives to come. It can happen this very moment, but you may have to wait for many lives for this moment to come.

So work hard, as if it is going to happen this very moment. And wait patiently . . . because it is not predictable. Nobody can say when this will happen – this may not happen for many lives. So wait patiently as if the whole process is a long gradual development. And, work hard, as hard as possible, as if this can happen this very moment.

-Osho

From My Way: The Way of the White Clouds, Discourse #5, Q1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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The Self is Light – Lucy Cornelssen

In December 31, 1989. Lucy Cornelssen – “Lucy Ma” to us, the Ashramites – “went gently into the night”. She did not “rage against the ending of the light”. Why should she? It was the end of the shadow, not the light. Her Sadguru Ramana had shown her that the Self, one’s own true Being, is eternal Light. So she went gently. After ninety beautiful years on earth, her last day here was also the last day of the year.

Lucy Ma came from a land which has produced great Indologists, like Max Mueller and Heinrich Zimmer. In earlier times, Arthur Schopenhauer, who saw the world as a Will and an Idea, lost his heart to Indian metaphysics. “If I were to be reborn,” said he, “I would like it to be in India.” Goethe, Germany’s Shakespeare was enraptured by Kalidasa’s famous play and sang in praise of its heroine Sakuntala. One may see in Lucy Ma’s return to the Source the restoration of her Fatherland’s unity.

This love of India was in Lucy’s blood too. Her mother was an Indologist of impressive erudition. Young Lucy often saw “Mutti” poring over huge tomes. One day, the girl was struck by the jacket of a book on her mother’s table and opened it at random. This book fascinated her before she read a single word of it.

A page in it had a strange picture which t

ransformed her all at once. She lost all sense of her body and surroundings. All that remained was an awareness of immense joy. After a while, her mother came in, shook the girl, and brought her back to herself. Lucy pointed to the picture and asked, “Mutti, what is that?” The mother said: “My dear child! This is Siva, the great god of India. There are three main gods for them: Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. Brahma creates, Vishnu preserves, while Siva destroys to make way for re-creation. See, how fierce Siva looks as He dances on the cremation ground! But to His devotees, He is sweet and gentle like a mother.” Precocious young Lucy was thrilled! From that moment she became a devotee of Siva at heart. It was years later that she realized that the trance-like state induced in her by that picture was very deep meditation which comes but rarely to people, what we call ‘samadhi’.

Siva became for her a living god. During many of her wakeful moments, she saw the fierce-looking figure dancing before her mind’s eye. Far from resisting that experience, she revelled in it.

Lucy was a beautiful girl. Left to herself, she would have remained single, wedded only to Siva. But “the stars that govern our conditions” decided otherwise and lovely Lucy married and became Frau Lucy Cornelssen. Lucy took to writing or rather was called to that vocation. Those were days when serious writers could just manage to keep the wolf from the door. “I was always poor!” said Lucy Ma once. But that was sadhana in a rich sense. Did she not in later years become a very articulate, highly polished writer, producing such well-received books as ‘Hunting the I’ and very perceptive German translations of Sri Bhagavan’s works?

The Second World War broke out in 1939, which did not spare a single household. “Wars always devour the best”, says a German proverb. The best in physical strength and valour, in patriotism and heroism. The best-minded Germans, like the great novelist Thomas Mann, left the Fatherland reluctantly and in disgust. Bertolt Brecht, the dramatist and passionate pacifist, dared the warmongers who burned his inflammable books, to burn him, and moved from one country to another to escape the evil of war. Einstein, the greatest German since Goethe, had left the country earlier, an exit which was later to prove disastrous to those who made him quit. Many stayed and suffered; Lucy was one of them. she had already found a measure of inward poise; the war did not touch her inmost being. She quietly retired to a life of solitude in a little hut in the midst of a dense forest.

Siva had come to Lucy in her childhood. Now Arunachala Siva Ramana came, for she was ready to receive and spread His teaching.

One night Lucy had lost the way to her hut and was groping around in the dark. Weary and dispirited, Lucy was about to collapse, when she saw a dot of light at some distance. When she reached the spot, she saw that it was another hut. The door was open. Lucy was not the kind of person to walk into a house unannounced. But on that night, she neither knocked nor called out. She just walked in. On a table near the candle, whose little flame had guided her to that hut, there stood the photograph of the head and shoulders of a man whose eyes shone with a rare lustre. Lucy saw the photo and stood still, a monument of bliss. . . Lucy found it strange that she now felt fully alive as never before and yet her body was nowhere.

The owner of the hut walked in after a while. She was surprised to see a youthful lady standing entranced and statue-like, a look of rapture on her radiant face. She shook Lucy and brought her out of the trance.

Lucy learnt that the person was the lady’s spiritual Master, that he lived at the foot of Arunachala, the Hill of the Holy Beacon, in South India, and was called Sri Ramana Maharshi.

Not much later a copy of Heinrich Zimmer’s book “Der Weg zum Selbst” (The Way to the Self) in which the great Indologist had written a glowing account of the Sage’s life and teachings and had made first-class translations of some of His works, “somehow found its way into my deep forest solitude.” That photograph and that book totally transformed Lucy’s life. The devotee of Siva had found her Sadguru!

Lucy Ma wrote in The Mountain Path in 1979: “I should say that it was my spiritual earnestness which brought about my acquaintance with Sri Ramana Maharshi through that book. I was able to perceive that Ramana was an authentic representative of the lofty Upanishadic Wisdom in our own days.”

Lucy started saving money to go to South India to be at the feet of her Master. Just when she was ready to leave, news came of His Mahasamadhi. She was just not destined to see her Sadguru in the body. True, he often said that He was not the body, but she was sad.

However, she soon braced herself and her grief was transmuted into energy for action. She resolved to bring out accurate translations in German of Bhagavan Ramana’s works, and towards this end, she made up her mind to acquire adequate proficiency in Tamil. By the time she left for India in 1956, she had a good passive knowledge of Tamil and had put together a manuscript of her German translation of His works. She said that she completed the draft translation “in a matter of weeks”. But then deeply meditative preparation had lasted years.

Lucy Ma came to Sri Ramanasramam because it was there that her Master had lived and sanctified every inch of the Holy Hill and the ashram by His footsteps. She would place her manuscripts at His feet and also seek confirmation from His disciples that her translation was flawless and worthy of the original. At the Ashram she got an excellent guide. T.K. Sundaresa Iyer – popularly called TKS – was well-read in English, Tamil and Sanskrit and had a deep understanding of Sri Bhagavan*s teachings. Affectionately called “Sundaresa” by Bhagavan, he was held in esteem by everyone in the Ashram. Lucy found in TKS a match for her Teutonic diligence and thoroughness.

When her translations were printed – In three volumes – Lucy Ma in characteristic humility, had hidden behind the nome-de-plume “Satyamayi”. Lucy Ma and TKS allowed me the privilege of assisting them in this project.

Lucy Ma, lover of peace and loneliness, spent more than seven months in sylvan surroundings at “Nirudhi Lingam” shrine on the hill-round route. It was here that Nayana (Kavyakantfia Ganapati Muni) had done tapasya before he met the young Swami whom he recognized and named as Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. Now around this sacred spot has sprung up a colony of very earnest sadhakas, deeply devoted to Sri Bhagavan, most of them from West Germany.

Lucy Ma kept shuttling between Germany and Tiruvannamabi. In response to my humble request and Ashram’s invitation, she finally came to Arunachala forever in the 70’s. Her daughter, Heike Becker-Foss, kept coming from Germany to spend some time with her mother, but Lucy Ma stayed put in Arunachala. Heike, daughter of her mother, tall and regal, bright and sensitive, wrote of the Ashram: “It Is another world than we are used to live in; strange and yet as if it were, the real world of the Soul, seemingly lost since centuries, yet never forgotten!”

Lucy Ma lived, till her last day, in a little apartment offered by me in front of the ashram. Once during my long absence from the town, she had arranged for her permanent stay in an Old Women’s Home in Germany. When I returned, she divulged her plan to me. With tears in my eyes, I pleaded with her not to leave dozens of her spiritual children, and me, her son, who needed her guidance most. She pleaded she was becoming too weak and a burden on the Ashram. I reasoned with her. Where was the question of burden? Lucy Ma magnanimously relented and said she would stay on if only for my sake. I was overwhelmed. When comes such another mother?

Lucy Ma observed silence on Mondays. The board “MOUNAM ~ MONDAY” hung at her door every Monday. But she would graciously consent to receive and talk to a serious seeker who could not wait till Tuesday. Actually, it was an atmosphere of silence prevailed in Lucy Ma’s apartment on all days. Her soft-spoken words had the quality of silence. She spoke little, but with great effect.

And wrote likewise. Her book ‘Hunting the I’ is one of the best and most original books on Sri Bhagavan on our shelves. It has fascinated many seekers with an intellectual bent of mind. Using her knowledge of philosophy, sociology, biology, archaeology, psychology, and other disciplines, she has interpreted Sri Bhagavan’s teachings in a novel and convincing way, anticipating all questions and copiously quoting Sri Bhagavan’s own words. …

The little book of 100 pages is a masterpiece of rigorous analysis and clarity of thought. Lucy Ma showed her gracious affection when she dedicated the original German version of ‘Hunting the I’ to me.

Her clarity impressed visitors. Only those were sent to her who would benefit by talking to her – mainly those who wanted to see her and those who knew only German or French. After a brief session of conversation with her, many came away clearer in mind.

Like me, Helga, the brave Bulgarian-born German lady, regularly visited Lucy Ma. She is now sorting out Lucy Ma’s few unpublished writings and translating them into English.

It so turned out that neither Helga nor I was at Lucy Ma’s bedside when she passed away. We were both out of town. Before I left, when I went to her to take leave, she was intensely emotional and said: “Thank you for everything, my son! You are taking leave of me and I am taking leave of everybody soon. I bless you!” I drenched her feet with my tears and walked away.

A day after I left, she was absorbed in Arunachala. Her body was interred inside the Ashram premises; her samadhi is built near those of Major Chadwick, S.S. Cohen and H.C. Khanna.

She went gently, happily. It was into the great Light that she went. Goethe, in his last moments, muttered: “Light, more light”. To Lucy Ma that great Light was never in doubt, ever since she realized the truth of Sri Bhagavan’s teaching, “the Self is Light”.

– The Mountain Path 1990

Here you can see more posts from Lucy Cornelssen.

From the Many to the One: Transcending the Seven Bodies, Part 1 – Osho

You said we have seven bodies: an etheric body, a mental body and so on. Sometimes it is difficult to adjust the Indian language to the terms of Western psychology. We have no theory for this in the West, so how can we translate these different bodies into our language? The spiritual is no problem, but the etheric? The astral?

The words can be translated, but from sources where you haven’t looked for them. Jung was better than Freud as far as the search beyond superficial consciousness is concerned, but Jung too is just a beginning. You can get more of a glimpse of what is meant by these things from Steiner’s Anthroposophy or from Theosophical writings: Madame Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine, Isis Unveiled and other works, or the works of Annie Besant, Leadbeater, Colonel Alcott. You can get a glimpse from Rosicrucian doctrines. There is also a great Hermetic tradition in the West, as well as the secret writings of the Essenes, the Hermetic fraternity by whom Christ was initiated. And more recently, Gurdjieff and Ouspensky can be of help. So something can be found in fragments, and these fragments can be put together.

And what I have said I have said in your terminology. I have used only one word that is not part of Western terminology: the nirvanic. The other six terms – the physical, the etheric, the astral, the mental, the spiritual and the cosmic – are not Indian. They belong to the West as well. In the West the seventh has never been talked about, not because there were no persons who knew about it, but because the seventh is impossible to communicate.

If you find these terms difficult, then you can simply use “the first,” “the second,” “the third” and so on. Don’t use any terms to describe them; just describe them. The description will be enough; terminology is of no consequence.

These seven can be approached from so many directions. As far as dream is concerned, Freud’s, Jung’s and Adler’s terms can be used. What they know as the conscious is the first body. The unconscious is the second – not exactly the same, but near enough to it. What they call the collective unconscious is the third – again, not exactly the same but something approximate to it.

And if there are no common terms in usage, new terms can be coined. That is always better, in fact, because new terms have no old connotations. When a new term is used, because you have no previous association with it, it becomes more significant and is understood more deeply. So you can coin new words.

The etheric means that which is concerned with the sky and with space. The astral means the minutest, the sukshma, the last one, the atomic, beyond which matter ceases to exist. For the mental there are no difficulties. For the spiritual there are no difficulties. For the cosmic too there are no difficulties.

Then you come to the seventh, the nirvanic. Nirvanic means total cessation, the absolute void. Not even the seed exists now; everything has ceased. Linguistically the word means extinction of the flame. The flame has gone out; the light is turned off. Then you cannot ask where it has gone. It has just ceased to be.

Nirvana means the flame that has gone out. Now it is nowhere, or everywhere. It has no particular point of existence and no particular time or moment of existence. Now it is space itself, time itself. It is existence or non-existence; it makes no difference. Because it is everywhere, you can use either term. If it is somewhere it cannot be everywhere, and if it is everywhere it cannot be somewhere, so nowhere and everywhere mean the same thing. So for the seventh body you will have to use ‘nirvanic,’ because there is no better word for it.

Words in themselves have no meaning at all. Only experiences have meaning. Only if you have experienced something of these seven bodies will it be meaningful to you. To help you, there are different methods to be used on each plane.

Begin from the physical. Then every other step opens for you. The moment you work on the first body, you have glimpses of the second. So begin from the physical. Be aware of it moment to moment. And not only outwardly aware. You can become aware of your body from the inside also. I can become aware of my hand as I have seen it from the outside, but there is an inner feeling to it too. When I close my eyes the hand is not seen, but there is still an inner feeling of something being there. So do not be aware of your body as seen from the outside. This cannot lead you inward. The inner feeling is quite different.

When you feel the body from within, you will know for the first time what it is to be inside the body. When you see it only from the outside you cannot know its secrets. You know only the outer boundaries, how it looks to others. If I see my body from the outside, I see it as it looks to others, but I have not known it as it is for me. You can see my hand from the outside and I can see it. It is something objective. You can share the knowledge of it with me. But my hand, looked at in that way, is not known inwardly. It has become public property. You can know it as well as I.

Only the moment I see it from within does it become mine in a way that is unsharable. You cannot know it; you cannot know how I feel it from within. Only I can know it. The body that is known to us is not our body. It is the body that is objectively known to all, the body that a physician can know in a laboratory. It is not the body that is. Only private, personal knowing can lead you inward; public knowledge cannot. That is why physiology or psychology, which are observations from without, have not led to a knowledge of our inner bodies. It is only the physical body that they know about.

So many dilemmas have been created because of this. One may feel beautiful from within, but we can force him to believe that he is ugly. If we are collectively agreed upon it, he may also come to agree. But no one feels ugly within. The inner feeling is always of beauty.

This outer feeling is not really a feeling at all. It is just a fashion, a criterion imposed from without. A person who is beautiful in one society may be ugly in another; a person who is beautiful in one period of history may not be in another. But the innermost feeling is always of beauty, so if there were no outside criteria there would be no ugliness. We have a fixed image of beauty that everyone shares. That is why there is ugliness and beauty, otherwise not. If we all become blind, no one will be ugly. Everyone will be beautiful.

Kiran: I started to simply watch myself, to watch my mind. I was watching all my inner processes. And—ever so slowly—I began to understand that the desire, the effort, the doings and practices, were the actual disturbances of my peace. The seeking was the obstruction to realization. Osho had told us many times that we had to drop all our doings and efforts. He said that we had never lost our enlightenment—that it was already our nature. Sitting right in front of him, I had heard him say that so many times. But I could not understand him because I was sleeping and dreaming. I believe that’s what happened to all of us—we fell asleep and therefore didn’t hear him.

When you are feeling lazy, there is a difference from when you are feeling active. When you are sleepy, there is a difference. These differences must be distinctly known. Only then do you become acquainted with the inner life of your body. Then you know the inner history, the inner geography of yourself in childhood, in youth, in old age.

The moment one becomes aware of his body from within, the second body automatically comes into view. This second body will be known from the outside now. If you know the first body from the inside, then you will become aware of the second body from the outside.

From outside the first body, you can never know the second body, but from inside it you can see the outside of the second body. Every body has two dimensions: the outer and the inner. Just like a wall has two sides – one looking outward and the other looking inward – every body has a boundary, a wall. When you come to know the first body from the inside, you become aware of the second body from the outside.

You are now in between: inside the first body and outside the second. This second body, the etheric body, is like condensed smoke. You can pass through it without any hindrance, but it is not transparent; you cannot look into it from the outside. The first body is solid. The second body is just like the first as far as shape is concerned, but it is not solid.

When the first body dies, the second remains alive for thirteen days. It travels with you. Then, after thirteen days, it too is dead. It disperses, evaporates. If you come to know the second body while the first is still alive, you can be aware of this happening.

The second body can go out of your body. Sometimes in meditation this second body goes up or down, and you have a feeling that gravitation has no pull over you; you have left the earth. But when you open your eyes, you are on the ground, and you know that you were there all the time. This feeling that you have risen comes because of the second body, not the first. For the second body there is no gravitation, so the moment you know the second you feel a certain freedom that was unknown to the physical body. Now you can go outside of your body and come back.

This is the second step if you want to know the experiences of your second body. And the method is not difficult. Just wish to be outside your body and you’re outside it. The wish itself is the fulfillment. For the second body no effort has to be made because there is no gravitational pull. The difficulty for the first body is because of the gravitational force. If I want to come to your house, I will have to fight with the gravitational force. But if there is no gravitation, then the simple desire will be enough. The thing will happen.

The etheric body is the body that is put to work in hypnosis. The first body is not involved in hypnosis; it is the second body. That is why a person with perfect vision can go blind. If the hypnotist says that you have gone blind, you become blind just by believing it. It is the etheric body that has been influenced; the suggestion goes to the etheric body. If you are in a deep trance, your second body can be influenced. A person who is alright can be paralyzed just by suggesting to him that “you are paralyzed.” A hypnotist must not use any language that creates doubt. If he says, “It appears that you have gone blind,” it will not work. He must be absolutely certain about it. Only then will the suggestion work.

So in the second body just say: “I am outside the body.” Just wish to be outside it, and you will be outside it. Ordinary sleep belongs to the first body. It is the first body – exhausted by the day’s labor, work, tension – relaxing. In hypnosis, it is the second body that is put to sleep. If it is put to sleep, you can work with it.

When you get any disease, seventy-five percent of it comes from the second body and spreads to the first. The second body is so suggestible that first year medical students always catch the same disease that is being studied. They begin to have the symptoms. If headache is being discussed, unknowingly everyone goes inside and begins to ask, “Do I have a headache? Do I have these symptoms?” Because going inward affects the etheric body, the suggestion is caught and a headache is projected, created.

The pain of childbirth is not of the first body; it is of the second. So through hypnosis, childbirth can be made absolutely painless – just by suggestion. There are primitive societies in which women do not feel labor pains because the possibility has never entered their minds. But every type of civilization creates common suggestions that then become part and parcel of everybody’s expectations.

Under hypnosis there is no pain. Even surgery can be done under hypnosis without any pain because if the second body gets the suggestion that there will be no pain then there is no pain.

As far as I am concerned, every type of pain, and every type of pleasure too, comes from the second body and spreads to the first. So if the suggestion changes, the same thing that has been painful can become pleasurable, and vice versa.

Change the suggestion, change the etheric mind, and everything will be changed. Just wish totally and it will happen. Totality is the only difference between wish and will. When you have wished something totally, completely, with your whole mind, it becomes willpower.

If you wish totally to go outside of your physiological body, you can go outside it. Then there is a possibility of knowing the second body from within, otherwise not. When you go outside your physical body, you are no longer in between: inside the first and outside the second. Now you are inside the second. The first body is not.

Now you can become aware of your second body from the inside, just as you became aware of your first body from the inside. Be aware of its inner workings, its inner mechanism, the inner life. The first time you try it is difficult, but after that you will always be within two bodies: the first and the second. Your point of attention will now be in two realms, two dimensions.

The moment you are inside the second body you will be outside the third, the astral. As far as the astral is concerned, there is no need even of any will. Just the wish to be inside is enough. There is no question of totality now. If you want to go in, you can go in. The astral body is a vapor like the second body, but it is transparent. So the moment you are outside, you will be inside. You will not even know whether you are inside or outside because the boundary is transparent.

The astral body is the same size as the first two bodies. Up to the fifth body, the size is the same. The content will change, but the size will be the same up to the fifth. With the sixth body the size will be cosmic. And with the seventh, there will be no size at all not even the cosmic.

The fourth body is absolutely wall-less. From inside the third body, there is not even a transparent wall. It is just a boundary, wall-less, so there is no difficulty in entering and no need of any method. So one who has achieved the third can achieve the fourth very easily.

But to go beyond the fourth, there is as much difficulty as there was in going beyond the first, because now the mental ceases. The fifth is the spiritual body. Before it can be reached there is again a wall, but not in the same sense as there was a wall between the first body and the second. The wall is between different dimensions now. It is of a different plane.

The four lower bodies were all concerned with one plane. The division was horizontal. Now, it is vertical. So the wall between the fourth and the fifth is bigger than between any two of the lower bodies – because our ordinary way of looking is horizontal, not vertical. We look from side to side, not up and down. But the movement from the fourth body to the fifth is from a lower plane to a higher plane. The difference is not between outside and inside but between up and down. Not unless you begin to look upward can you move into the fifth.

The mind always looks downward. That is why yoga is against the mind. The mind flows downward just like water. Water has never been made the symbol of any spiritual system because its intrinsic nature is to flow downward. Fire has been the symbol of so many systems. Fire goes upward; it never goes downward. So in moving from the fourth body to the fifth body, fire is the symbol. One must look upward; one must stop seeing downward.

How to look upward? What is the way? You must have heard that in meditation the eyes must be looking upward to the ajna chakra. The eyes must be focused upward as if you are going to see inside your skull. Eyes are only symbolic. The real question is of vision. Our vision, our faculty for seeing, is associated with the eyes, so eyes become the means through which even inward vision happens. If you turn your eyes upward, then your vision too goes upward.

Raja yoga begins with the fourth body. Only hatha yoga begins with the first body; other yogas begin from somewhere else. Theosophy begins from the second body, and other systems begin from the third. As civilization goes on progressing to the fourth body, many persons will be able to begin from there. But only if they have worked through the three lower bodies in their past lives can the fourth be used. Those who study raja yoga from scriptures or from swamis and gurus without knowing whether or not they have worked through their three lower bodies are bound to be disillusioned because one cannot begin from the fourth. The three must be crossed first. Only then does the fourth come.

-Osho

From Psychology of the Esoteric, Discourse #7, Part 1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

For related posts see:

Beyond the Gateless Gate: Transcending the Seven Bodies, Part 2

Also see: The Mysteries of the Seven Bodies

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.