Love – Sat Sangha Salon

The Lover Becomes the Beloved – Osho

He is Brahma, he is Shiva, he is Indra. He is indestructible, the supreme, the self-luminous.

He alone is Vishnu, he is prana, his is sun, fire, he is moon. He alone is all that was and all that will be, the eternal.

Knowing him one goes beyond the sting of death; there is no other way to reach complete freedom.

Experiencing one’s own self in all beings and all beings in the self, one attains the highest brahman, and not by any other means.

-Kaivalya Upanishad

The reality is unknown; the reality is unnamed. The reality is, but indefinable. It is; it is felt. We are part of it; we encounter it everywhere. Wheresoever you move, you move in reality; you live every moment in it; you participate in it every moment. It is not something different from you, you are not something different from it, but still you cannot name it, you cannot pinpoint it, you cannot give it a label. What is it?

This is a problem for a religious mind. It is not a problem for a philosophical mind; the philosopher can say it is existence, naked, pure – it is absolute. For a Heidegger it is not a problem; he can call it simple “is-ness,” being. For a Shankara it is not a problem; he can call it the supreme, the absolute, the brahman. But these are not basically religious types.

For a religious person it becomes a problem, because unless he can name it, he cannot be related to it; unless he can personify it, he cannot feel the relatedness. The intimacy is impossible with a pure “is-ness.” An intimate relationship is not possible with something absolute, with something just like a concept. Being, brahman – how can you feel related with being, with brahman, with “is-ness,” with existence? Relationship is only possible when you personify it. That is the basic difference between philosophical speculation and religious search.

Religion is in search of an intimate relationship with existence; it is not only speculation. For a religious man it is going to be life itself. Philosophy seeks in terms of knowledge, religion in terms of love. When you are seeking in terms of knowledge, you can be an observer, an onlooker. But you are not a participant, you are not deep in it – you are just an outsider. A philosopher is basically an outsider; he goes on thinking, but from without. He will not enter into a deep relationship. He will not get involved; he will not be committed. But religion is nothing if it is not a commitment; religion is nothing if it is not an intimate love relationship. So how to change existence into a love object? This sutra is concerned with this.

This sutra says that he is nameless, but we cannot deal with a nameless. He is nameless, obviously, but we must give a name to it; otherwise, we cannot feel related. And to feel related is a great transformation. Not only is the divine nameless, everything is nameless. A child is born a nameless phenomenon, with no name – but if you don’t give a name to him, he will be unable even to live. If no name is given to him, it will be impossible for him to move. Not only that, but others will not be able to understand him; he himself will not be able to understand himself. Even to understand oneself, one has to be addressed, given a name; otherwise, one cannot even think about oneself – who he is. Of course, this name is just a false label, but it helps.

This is one of the mysteries of life: even falsities help, even untruths help, even dreams help, even illusions help. So a person who is bent upon destroying every illusion, every falsity, every untruth, may prove harmful. One has to remember: something may be false, but don’t destroy it. Let it be there, it has a utility. But the utility should not become the truth. Utility must remain a utility, it must not become the truth.

Man cannot feel in deep relationship with the divine, with existence, unless he names it. Many names are possible – it will depend on the man who is naming. Thousands and thousands of names have been given to him. In India we have a book, Vishnu Sahastranam – a thousand names of Vishnu. The whole book consists only of names – nothing else, just names. It is a very beautiful book, consisting only of names, but in its own way showing that the phenomenon is nameless. Only because of that, thousands of names are possible.

So you can name the divine any way. Call him whatsoever you like, but call him. The emphasis should be on the call, not on the name. Call him Rama, call him Hari, call him Krishna, call him Christ; call him any name – but call! Let there be a deep invocation. Use any name. That name is just artificial, but it will help.

Make any image, but make it. The making is significant. Any image will do, but remember that this is just an artificial help; a technical use must be made of it. In this way also, India has tried many, many experiments – particularly Hindus. They make their idols of mud. Stone came only later on, with Buddhists and Jains; otherwise, Hindus were satisfied with mud images. Stone is a more substantial thing, more permanent; it gives a permanency to a thing. A mud idol is just as impermanent as anything in the world. Hindus tried to make their idols only of mud, so that they remembered: this is just an artificial phenomenon made by us. And they insisted that it must be dissolved soon after.

A Ganesha is made, worshiped, everything done – called, prayed, invoked – and then they go and throw it into the sea. This is very symbolic. This means: this image was just an artificial thing. We created it, we used it; now the use is over and we throw it. Hindus are the least idol-worshipers in the world, but everywhere they are known as the idol-worshipers. They are the least, because they are so courageous to throw away their idols so easily, and with such a celebration. They go to throw their idols into the sea with such a celebration. The throwing is as necessary as the creating.

With the stone idols things changed. No stone idol should be there. Clay idols are beautiful, because even if you are not going to destroy them, they will destroy themselves. Sooner or later, you will become aware that this was just something made for a particular purpose. The purpose is solved, now the artificial help can be dissolved with a thankfulness, with a celebration. No country, no religion, no race, has been so courageous with its idols. Really, sometimes strange things happen.

Hindus are the least idol worshipers, and Mohammedans the most – and they have not worshiped at all. They have not made any idol. Not even a picture of Mohammed is available – not even a picture. How did he look? They have persistently denied any picture, any idol, any image. Not only have they denied them for themselves, they have destroyed others’ also. Others’ images, others’ idols they have destroyed – with a very good wish. Nothing is wrong in it, because they feel idol worship is harmful – harmful to a religious man. It must not be in between; God must be faced directly, immediately. There should be nothing in between – a very good wish, but it proved dangerous!

It proved dangerous; they went on destroying; they destroyed much that was beautiful – much. They destroyed Buddhist monasteries, Hindu temples, Hindu idols, Buddha’s images – they destroyed. All over Asia they destroyed, with a very good wish that nothing should remain between man and God. But they became too concerned with idols. Idol-destroying became their sole religious practice.

This is worship in a negative way – too much concentration on idols; idols became too significant for them. This is how life is strange. I call Hindus the least idol-worshipers, because they can throw away their idols any time the purpose is solved. They use them, but the idols can never use the Hindus; Hindus can use the idols. Mohammedans are so against, yet so concerned; so against but still so attached. They turn really into negative idol-worshipers. Create an image, create any name, create anything that you feel can help you move towards the divine. All names belong to him.

Old Mohammedan names – old, and still Mohammedans are orthodox and old . . . All old Mohammedan names are names of Allah. All old Hindu names – but now all names are not old – are names of Rama. Not only have we tried to give God a thousand names, we have tried to give everyone a name which really belongs to God. This is symbolic. Every name is God’s name, and every name – to whomsoever it belongs – indicates a god.

This sutra says:

He his Brahma, he is Shiva, he is Indra. He is indestructible, the supreme, the self-luminous. He alone is Vishnu, he is prana. He is sun, fire, he is the moon.

He is everything. Call him moon, call him sun, call him Vishnu – call him anything. Whatsoever you call him, remember that the call – the heartfelt call, the prayerful mood – is important. The name is just a device to help you to call him.

He alone is all that was and all that will be, the eternal.

Knowing him one goes beyond the sting of death;

Knowing him one goes beyond the sting of life and death – why? This has to be understood. Why, if you can understand him, why will you go beyond life and death? – because life and death belong to the ego. If you say he is everything that was, if you say he is everything that is, if you say he is everything that ever will be, that means you are not. That means he is and you are not; that means the ego is not – and only the ego is born and only the ego is to die. If he is everything, then he is birth, he is death, he is life. Then how can you conceive of yourself as being born, and as dying?

Birth and death are just two poles of your ego – the feeling that “I am.” If you drop this feeling, then birth is not the beginning and death is not the end. Then something always was, before you were born. Really, you are a continuity, a continuity of the whole past; and when you die, nothing is dying – only the continuity changes, takes a turn. Around the corner the continuity will continue. But if you begin to feel between birth and death that you are, then you will die, then you will have to feel the suffering of dying.

Remember that you are a continuity. The whole universe is involved in you; you are not alone. No man is an island, no man is alone and separate. The world exists as a net, as an interconnection, as inter-relatedness. The whole world exists as one. You are organic to it; you belong to it.

If this feeling comes to you. Knowing him one goes beyond the sting of life and death; there is no other way to reach complete freedom. And unless you are a non-ego, there is no way to attain complete freedom. Ego is the slavery, ego is the suffering, ego is the anguish. Ego is the anxiety, the tension, the disease. So unless there is egolessness . . . and egolessness and God-consciousness mean the same thing. If you become God-conscious, you will become I-unconscious. If you are I-conscious, then you cannot be God-conscious. This is focusing. If you are focused on the ego, the whole universe goes into darkness. If you are focused on the whole universe, the “I” simply disappears. “I” is a focusing of all the energy on a limited link of an unlimited continuity – one link. One link of the whole chain is the ego. Remember the whole continuity.

It will be good if we can think in this way. Could I exist if something had been different in the universe? – I could not exist. Even a millennium before, if something had been different from what it was, I would not be here, because the whole universe is a continuity. Whatsoever I am saying . . . if a Buddha had not been there in the past, or a Jesus had not been there in the past, I couldn’t say this. The whole universe is a continuity. A single event missed in the past would make the whole universe different. And when I say a Buddha, you can understand. But I say, even if a single tree had not been there in the universe, I would not be here.

The whole universe exists as a continuity; it is an intermittent phenomenon. We are here because the universe was such that we could be here. The whole past was such that this meeting becomes possible. Something missing, and the whole thing will change. This feeling of eternal continuity in the past, of eternal continuity in the future, will dissolve the ego completely. You are not; you are just a part – a part which cannot exist alone.

Then the destiny of the whole universe becomes your destiny, then you have no separate individual destiny. That is what is meant by saying one goes beyond life and death. If you have no individual destiny, the whole destiny of the universe is your destiny. Then who is going to die? And who is going to be born? And who is concerned? Then a total acceptance explodes, a total acceptance comes. A tathata, a total acceptance happens. This is freedom; this is ultimate freedom. Now you cannot feel any limitation.

The universe has never felt limitation. You feel it because you separate yourself. I will die as an individual, but I cannot die as a universe. The atoms in my hand will be there; my eyes will be there as someone else’s eyes; my heart will be there as someone else’s heart. I will exist in the trees, in the stones, in the earth, in the sky – I will be there as a universe. I will not be there as myself. My consciousness will be there as someone else’s consciousness. Or even it may not be someone else’s consciousness . . . just a cloud floating in the sky, or just a silence, or just a drop in the ocean. As myself I am going to die, but not as a universe.

This remembrance, this realization is the only freedom – the only and the ultimate. Unless this happens, you are a slave. You will go on feeling limitations, you will go on feeling boundaries, you will go on feeling that this is going to be death, this is going to be birth, this is going to be pain, this is going to be suffering. To create, or to go on believing in individual destiny, is irreligion. The beginning of the feeling that “I am not an individual destiny – destiny belongs to the universe, I belong to the universe” – is the beginning of freedom, is the beginning of religion.

Religion is the search for total freedom. And unless the freedom is total, it is not freedom at all.

Experiencing one’s own self in all beings in the self, one attains the highest brahman, and not by any other means.

This is what I mean by being aware of a universal destiny: by dissolving one’s individual, petty destiny one begins to feel then that he is everything – all. All penetrates into oneself, and one’s own existence penetrates all. Really, it is saying simply that boundaries dissolve.

The observer becomes the observed.

The knower becomes the known.

The lover becomes the beloved.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #25

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

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All Beings are from the Very Beginning Buddhas – Osho

I was thinking what should I give to you today? Because this is my birthday, I was incarnated into this body on this day. This is the day I saw for the first time the green of the trees and the blue of the skies. This was the day I for the first time opened my eyes and saw God all around. Of course the word ‘God’ didn’t exist at that moment, but what I saw was God. I was thinking what should I give to you today? Then I remembered a saying of Buddha: sabba danam dhamma danana jnati – the gift of truth excels all other gifts. And my truth is love.

The word ‘truth’ looks to me a little too dry and desert-like. I am not in much tune with the word ‘truth’ – it looks too logical, it looks too ’heady’. It gives you the feeling of philosophy, not of religion. It gives you the idea as if you have concluded – that you have come to a conclusion, that there has been a syllogism behind it, argumentation and logic and reasoning. No, truth’ is not my word, love’ is my word. Love is of the heart. Truth is partial, only your head is involved. In love you are involved as a totality – your body, your mind, your soul, all are involved.

Love makes you a unity – and not a union, remember, but a unity. Because in a union those who join together remain separate. In a unity they dissolve, they become one, they melt into each other. And that moment I call the moment of truth, when love has given you unity. First, love gives you unity in your innermost core. Then you are no more a body, no more a mind, no more a soul. You are simply one – unnamed, undefined, unclassified. No more determinate, definable, no more comprehensible. A mystery, a joy, a surprise, a jubilation, a great celebration.

First, love gives you an inner unity. And when the inner unity has happened the second happens on its own – you are not to do anything for it. Then you start falling in unity with the whole beyond you. Then the drop disappears in the ocean and the ocean disappears into the drop. That moment, that moment of orgasm between you and the whole, is where you become a Buddha. That moment is the moment Buddhahood is imparted to you. Or, better, revealed to you – you have always been that, unaware.

My word is love. So I say: My beloved ones, I love you. and I would like you to fill the whole world with love. Let that be our religion. Not Christianity, not Hinduism, not Islam, not Jainism, not Buddhism, but love. Love without any adjective to it. Not Christian love – because how can love be Christian? It is so stupid. How can love be Hindu? It is ridiculous. Love is simply love. In love you can be a Christ. in love you can be a Buddha – but there is no Buddhist love and there is no Christian love.

In love you disappear, your mind disappears. In love you come to an utter relaxation. That’s my teaching to you, I teach love. And there is nothing higher than love.

Then I thought I should give you something beautiful on this day. And I remembered Hakuin’s Song of Meditation. It is a very small song, but a great gift. Hakuin is one of the greatest Zen masters. His song contains all: all the Bibles and all the Korans and all the Vedas. A small song of few lines, but it is like a seed – very small, but if you allow passage to it to your heart, it can become a great tree. It can become a Bodhi tree – it will have great foliage and much shade and thousands of people can sit and rest underneath it. It will have big branches and many birds can come and have their nests on it.

See: I have become a tree. You are the people who have come to make their nests on my tree. You can also become this. Everybody should become this – because unless you become this you will go on missing your fulfillment. Unless you become a great tree which has come to its foliage, flowers and fruits – which is fulfilled – you will remain in discontent. Anguish will go on gnawing in your heart, misery will linger around you. Bliss will be only a word, signifying nothing. God will be just gibberish.

When you have fulfillment then there is grace and then there is God. In your fulfillment you come to realize the benediction of existence.

This is a song of meditation. Hakuin has called it ‘song’ – yes, it is a song. If meditation is without a song it is do and dead – it does not beat it does not breathe. It is a song and a dance: sing it and dance it. Just don’t think upon it – then you will miss the messages you will miss its content. You will find this song and its meaning only when you are singing and dancing. When the music of life has overtaken you, has possessed you.

Hakuin’s song is so small and yet so vast, it is unbelievable. How can a man condense so much truth and so much love and so much insight into so few words? But Hakuin was a man of few words, a man of silence. For years he would not speak at all, and then he would speak a word or two.

Once the Emperor of Japan invited him to deliver a sermon in the palace. And the queen and the king and the prime minister and the ministers and the high officials and the generals, they all had gathered with great respect to listen. Hakuin came, stood there for a single moment, looked around, and left the hall. The king was puzzled. He asked his prime minister, ‘What is the Matter with this man? We had come to listen.’ The old prime minister said, ‘This is the greatest sermon that I have ever heard. He has said it! You had asked him to come and teach you about silence. He has taught it! He stood there in silence, he was silence. What more do you ask? What more do you demand? He was pure silence, standing there for those few seconds. He was utter silence. He was silence, throbbing, pulsating. But you were looking to hear some words.’

But about silence nothing can be said. And all that is said about silence will be wrong. How can you say anything about silence? To say something will be falsifying it. That’s why Lao Tzu says Nothing can be said about Tao – and if something is said, in the very saying of it, it has become untrue. Tao is silent. But that silence is not the silence of a cemetery. It is the silence of a garden where trees are alive breathing and yet there is utter silence. It is not a dead silence; it is an alive silence. Hence, he has called it ’The Song of Meditation’.

Buddha says: My approach to reality is not of belief but of seeing. His religion has been qualified as ‘Ihi passika: Come and see.’ Not as ‘Come and believe.’ Buddha says ‘Come and see: Ihi passika.’ It is here, present – you just come and see. He does not require you to believe. He is the only great teacher in the world who dropped belief – and with dropping belief he transformed religion from a very low childish stature to a very mature thing. With Buddha religion became young. Otherwise it was childish. It was a kind of belief – belief is superstition, belief is out of fear. And belief is blind. Buddha has given eyes to religion. He says: See, and there is no need to believe. And when you have seen then it will not be a belief, it will be knowing.

In this song of Hakuin you will see the way of seeing – how to open the eyes. Because truth is always there, has been always there. It is not that the truth has to be produced. Buddha says: Yatha bhutam – It is! It is already there, it is confronting you! It is in the east, it is in the west, it is in the north, it is in the south. It surrounds you – it is without and it is within. But you will have to see it: Ihi passika. Your eyes are closed, you have forgotten how to open them.

Meditation is nothing but the art of opening your eyes. The art of cleansing your eyes. the art of dropping the dust that has gathered on the mirror of your consciousness. It is natural, dust gathers. Man has been traveling and traveling for thousands of lives – dust gathers. We are all travelers, much dust has gathered – so much so that the mirror has completely disappeared. There is only dust upon dust, layers and layers of dust, and you cannot see the mirror. But the mirror is still there – it cannot be lost, because it is your very nature. If it can be lost then it will not be your nature. It is not that you have a mirror: you ARE the mirror. The traveler is the mirror – he cannot lose it, he can only forget it. At the most, forgetfulness.

You have not lost your Buddhahood. Buddha hood means the mirror clean of dust. The mirror again fresh, again reflecting, again functioning – that’s what Buddhahood is. Buddha hood means a consciousness which has become awakened. The sleep is no more and the dreams are no more and the desires have disappeared. The dust gathers, it is natural. But you cling to the dust – your desire functions like a glue.

And what is your desire? That has to be understood. If you have understood your desire you have understood all. Because in the understanding of desire, desire ceases. And when desire ceases, suddenly you have a totally new feel of your being; you are no more the old. What is the desire? What are you searching? What are you seeking?

Happiness. Bliss. Joy. That’s what you are seeking. And you have been seeking for millennia, and you have not found it yet. It is time, the right time, to think again, to meditate again. You have been seeking so hard, you have been trying so hard – perhaps you are missing just because you are trying? Maybe it is trying that keeps you away from happiness? Let us think over it, brood over it. Give a little pause to your search, recapitulate.

You have been searching for many lives. You don’t remember other lives, no need – but in this life you have been searching, that will do. And you have not found it. And nobody has ever found it by searching. Something is wrong in the very search. In the search naturally you forget yourself; you start looking everywhere, everywhere else. You look to the north and to the east and to the west and to the south, and in the sky and underneath the seas, and you go on searching everywhere. And the search becomes more and more desperate, because the more and more you search and you don’t find, great anxiety arises – ’Am I going to make it this time, or am I again going to miss it?’

More and more desperation, more and more misery, more and more madness. You go nuts. And the happiness remains as far away as ever – in fact it recedes farther away from you. The more you search, the less is the possibility to get it. Because it is inside you.

Happiness is the function of your consciousness when it is awake. Unhappiness is the function of your consciousness when it is asleep. Unconsciousness is your mirror burdened with great dust and luggage and past. Happiness is when the burden has been dropped and the mirror has been found again. And again your mirror can reflect the trees and the sun and the sand and the sea and the stars. When you have again become innocent, when you again have again become innocent, when you again have the eyes of a child – in that clarity you are happy.

I was reading a few lines of Michael Adam. They are beautiful.

‘Perhaps trying even makes for unhappiness. Perhaps all the din of my desiring has kept the strange bird from my shoulder. I have tried so long and so loud after happiness. I have looked so far and wide. I have always imagined that happiness was an island in the river. Perhaps it is the river. I have thought happiness to be the name of an inn at the end of the road. Perhaps it is the road. I have believed that happiness was always tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Perhaps it is here. Perhaps it is now. I have looked everywhere else.

‘So: here and now.’

But here and now is clearly unhappiness. Perhaps then no such thing as happiness. Perhaps happiness exists not, it is just a dream created by an unhappy mind. Certainly it cannot be as I unhappily imagine it. Here and now there is not happiness. So happiness is not. I need not therefore waste myself on what is not. I can forget about happiness then; I can cease to care and instead concern myself with something that I do know, can feel and fully experience. Happiness is an idle dream: now it is morning. I can awaken and stay with unhappiness, with what is real under the sun this moment. And now I see how much of my unhappiness came from trying to be happy; even I can see that trying is unhappiness. Happiness does not try . . .

‘At last, I am here and now. At last, I am what I am. I am unpretending, at ease. I am unhappy – so what? . . . But is this what I ran from? Is this really unhappiness? . . . ’

Think over it, meditate over it.

‘And when I cease to try to be happy or anything else, when I do not seek anymore, when I do not care to go anywhere, get anything, then it seems I am already arrived in a strange place: I am here and now. When I see that I can do nothing, that all my doing is the same dream, in the moment that I see this, my mind the old dreamer and wanderer is for the moment still and present.’

Naturally. If you are not searching, not seeking, not desiring, not dreaming, for a moment the mind falls into a silence. It is still. There is nothing to hanker about, nothing to make a fuss about, nothing to expect and nothing to be frustrated about. For a moment the mind stops its constant chasing. In that moment of stillness you are in a strange place, you are in a strange space, unknown, never known before. A new door has opened. For the moment the mind is still and present.

‘For the moment, here and now, the real world shows, and see: here and now is already and always all that I had sought and striven after elsewhere and apart. More than that: I have hunted after shadows; the reality is here in this sunlit place, in this bird-call now. It was my seeking aster reality that took me from it; desire deafened me. The bird was singing here all the while. . . .

‘If I am still and careless to find happiness, then happiness it seems is able to find me. It is, if I am truly still, as still as death – if I am thoroughly dead, here and now.’

Happiness suddenly jumps upon you. When desire disappears, happiness appears. When the striving is no more, for the first time you see who you are. That knowing is what Buddha means: Come and see – Ihi passika. From where is he calling you: ‘Come and see’? He is calling you from your desires. You have gone far away from your home, you have lost your home base. You are not where you appear to be. Your dream has taken you to faraway worlds – imaginary; illusory, your own creation.

Zen people have a special word for meditation, they call it ‘fu-sho’. Fu-sho means ‘unproduced’. You cannot produce it, you cannot do anything to bring it. You have to be passive, in a state of non-doing – then it comes. Then it comes suddenly, from nowhere, from the blue. And in that coming, in that shower of silence and stillness, is the transformation. It is nothing special, Zen people say. How can it be special? It is everybody’s nature, so how can it be special? It is utterly ordinary, everybody has it. You may know, you may not know – that is a different thing – but you have it. Not for a single moment have you missed it. Not for a single moment has it been taken away from you. It has been there, lying and lying and waiting for you to come back home.

Another word Zen people use for meditation is ‘wu-shi’. It means ’nothing special’ or ‘no fuss’.

Now this song of Hakuin.

All beings are from the very beginning Buddhas.

This one sentence is enough. It is the beginning and the middle and the end. It is all. The alpha and the omega.

All beings are from the very beginning Buddhas.

You are Buddhas. Never for a single moment have you been otherwise. You cannot. You cannot really go away from your Buddhahood, you can only dream. You can only dream that you have gone away, but while dreaming you will still remain here now. This is impossible, to lose your Buddhahood, because God is involved in everything and every being. And when Hakuin says, ‘All beings are from the very beginning Buddhas,’ don’t think that he is talking only of human beings. Animals are included, so are included the birds and the trees and the rocks. All that is, is included.

The English word ‘being’ comes from a Sanskrit root ‘bhu’. Bhu means ‘that which grows’. All that grows is God. The trees grow, the birds grow, the rocks grow. All that grows is God. And everything grows in its own pace. Remember, the root of ‘being’, the word ‘being’, is BHU. It simply means that which breathes, that which grows, that which has life – howsoever rudimentary, howsoever primitive. All is included.

All beings are from the very beginning Buddhas.

And what is the meaning of a Buddha? ‘Buddha’ means a consciousness that has come back to itself – is no more wandering in dreams, is no more thinking of the future, is no more thinking of the past. A consciousness that is not possessed by memories or possessed by imagination. A consciousness that has got rid of the past and rid of the future, a consciousness that has only present. A consciousness that lives in the moment, utterly here now. Alert, awake, radiant.

All beings are Buddhas. Zen people call this single sentence ‘The Lion’s Roar’. It is. In a single stroke Hakuin has delivered you, has saved you from yourself. There is no more salvation needed. A single statement is enough to release you from all bondage. You are a Buddha. But remember you are not a Buddha in any special sense. Everybody is – your dog and your cow and your buffalo and your donkey, everybody is! So don’t take it in an egoistic sense, that ‘I am a Buddha’. Don’t make it ambitious, don’t go on an ambition trip. ALL is Buddha. Life is Buddha, being is Buddhahood, existence is Buddhahood.

Just think of it. One of the greatest statements ever made:

All beings are from the very beginning Buddhas.

Hakuin has finished in one sentence. The remaining song will be a repetition, really. The remaining song will be for those who cannot understand the first statement. It is said, when Hakuin was writing this song and he wrote his first sentence – ‘All beings are from the very beginning Buddhas’ – one of his disciples was sitting there and he said, ‘Stop now. Now there is no more to say.’ He left the room, the disciple left the room. He said, ‘Now there is no point. You have finished in the first sentence – this should be the last sentence!’

But still the song is beautiful. It will help you from different directions to come to the same truth. It will help you to see the point from different vantage points, from different windows. You will see the same Buddha sitting, from every window of the temple. But it is good, because from some window there may be more light falling on the Buddha, from some window the green of the trees may be reflected in the Buddha’s face, from some other window a star may be looking at the Buddha, from some other window something else – a bird may be sitting and singing a song.

All beings are from the very beginning Buddhas.

The universe is made of the stuff called ‘God’. So God is not in the end. God is in the beginning, in the middle, and the end. Only God is. But let me remind you, when I use the word ‘God’ I mean godliness.

It is like water and ice:
Apart from water, no ice,
Outside living beings, no buddhas.

Hakuin says: It is like water and ice. There is no difference between water and ice, and yet a sort of difference. If you have gone to the market to purchase ice, you will not purchase water. You will purchase ice – you will insist. If somebody says, ‘Take this water,’ you will say, ‘I have come for the ice.’ There is a sort of difference. But not much, not really – only on the surface. The ice will melt and will become water, and the water can become frozen and can be turned into ice. They are two phases of one phenomenon.

You are like ice and Buddha is like water. You are frozen, he has melted. And let me repeat: There is no other alchemy then love to help you melt. Love melts, because love is warmth. People melt only in love. When they are not in love they become cold, and in the cold they freeze. And you must have watched it, even in your small ways. When you are loving you are flowing. When you are flowing you are glowing. When you are loving you expand. When you are not loving you shrink. When you are loving you have warmth around you. When you are not loving you are surrounded by a cold wind – you are freezing, and anybody who comes close to you will freeze.

There are people, if they look at you with their cold eyes you will feel a shivering. And there are people, when they look at you with their warmth, with their love, you suddenly feel this is your home. There are eyes which give you the feeling of being at home, and there are eyes which stare at you and make you aware that you are a stranger here.

Apart from water, no ice,
Outside living beings, no buddhas.

So Buddha hood is nothing but a state of merger. Frozen Ness is gone. Your definition has disappeared. You are no more limited, you are no more confined. At the deepest core, you are no more. Because if you are then there will be some kind of frozenness in you. If you are then you cannot be flowing – something will be hindering and something will be stuck and something will be obstructing. When you are not at all . . . That’s why when two lovers are in deep embrace there are not two persons. There is only one energy, revolving. When two lovers are really in deep embrace there comes a moment, the woman forgets whether she is woman or man and the man forgets whether he is man or woman. If that moment has not come then you have not loved.

In deep love you disappear. Still something is there, a kind of presence – but nobody is present. There is no center as frozen ice, there is no self. That’s why Buddha has very much insisted that your self is the root cause which is hindering you from being a Buddha. The feeling that ‘I am’ makes you ice, icy and cold. If this feeling ‘I am’ disappears, there is no problem. Ice will melt.

It is like water and ice:
Apart from water, no ice,
Outside living beings, no buddhas.

The Buddhist doctrine talks about Buddha’s three bodies. They have to be understood. The first body is called the body of truth, the universal body, the divine body. You can call it God. The second body is called the bliss body – the bridge between the first and the third. You can call it the soul. And the third body is the physical body.

You know only your physical body. You have not known your second body, the bliss body. And unless you know the second body you will not be able to know the third, the deepest – your universal body, your cosmic body, your Buddha body.

This is the Buddhist trinity – the father, the son and the holy ghost. Or, this is the Buddhist trimurti – the three faces of God. Buddha says everybody has these three bodies. The first, the physical, is very frozen. The second is in a state of liquidity. And the third is vaporous. First the ice has to melt into water and then the water has to evaporate. Have you watched? The ice has definition, boundaries; the water has no definition, no boundaries. You pour the water into any jug, into any pot, it takes the shape of the pot. It is non-resistant, it is non-aggressive, it does not fight. It is liquid, it adjusts.

The man of compassion and love is like water, he adjusts. He has no resistance, he does not enforce his form on anybody. He accommodates, he is accommodative, he is spacious.

And then the third, when the water has evaporated and has disappeared and become invisible. Now you cannot even pour it into a pot. It has become part of the sky, it has moved into the eternal, into the infinite.

These are the three states of water, and these are the three states of consciousness too. You have become too gross because you have become too much identified with your first body. As if a man has be fooled himself in believing that the walls of his house are his house. The walls of the house are not the house, you have to go a little in. You have to find the innermost core of your being – and that innermost core is invisible. That innermost core is almost like emptiness.

The first body is essence, the second body is form, the third body is action. People who live only in the physical body live only in doings – what to do, what not to do. Their whole life is just swerving, swaying, between this and that. Their life consists of doing; they don’t know anything else.

The second body is of form. A man starts seeing glimpses of non-action. That’s what happens in meditation – when you are sitting silently doing nothing, great joy arises. From nowhere, for no cause. You don’t know from where it is coming but great joy arises, as if out of nothing. Miraculously, magically. This is the second, the form. The joy takes form.

And then there is the third. If you go on following and go on moving inwards, one day you reach to the essence. That, Buddha calls the body of truth. There, no action and no no-action. All has disappeared, the whole duality has disappeared, you have come to the very essence of existence. That essence is liberating. That essence is nirvana. And you are not to go anywhere to find it, you are carrying it all along.

All beings are from the very beginning buddhas.
It is like water and ice:
Apart from water, no ice,
Outside living beings, no buddhas.
Not knowing it is near, they seek it afar. What a pity!

And if you go on seeking afar for that which is near, you will go on missing. Nobody is at fault. Before you go into the four comers of the world to search for it, first go into yourself. If you don’t find it there, then you can go anywhere you like. But people don’t go within, they start by without. And the without is vast – you can go on and on, you can search all over the earth. And people are searching. People come to me and they say, ‘We have been searching for our whole lives. And we have been to here and there, and we have been to Japan and to Ceylon and to Burma and to Thailand, and we have travelled all over the East. And we have not found it yet.’

The East is within you! It is not in Thailand, it is not in India. And you will not find it anywhere. At the most, if you accidentally come across an enlightened man, he will throw you to yourself. Not that he will give it to you. Nobody can give it to you. It is already there; there is no need to give it.

And because in the modern world communication has become easy, traveling has become easy, people are becoming even more mad. They go jumping from one city to another, from one airport to another airport. They are driving themselves crazy. And to reach home you need not enter into any aeroplane, into any train, into any car. You only need to enter into yourself. And ticket less – no ticket is needed. And nobody is there to debar you; it is your territory.

I have heard:

A party of Americans happened to arrive at Mount Vesuvius during one of its more spectacular eruptions. ‘Say!’ exclaimed one of the Yanks in an awed tone, ‘doesn’t that beat all Hell!’ ‘Sapristi!’ said the Italian guide. ’How you Americans-a travel!’

Now even Hell is in danger, afraid of the tourists.

People go on searching and seeking for something which needs no search, which can be found only when search stops. And I am not saying that you strive to stop it – then again you have started it. If you strive to stop it, then you have missed the point. You have just to see the point of it, that striving will take you away from you, that striving will create more and more tension. Seeing the fact – Ihi passika. Seeing this, striving disappears and there is suddenly a stillness. In that stillness the first glimpse will come of bliss. You will enter into your second body. And when you have entered into the second body then it will be more and more easy, very lucid, to slip into the central most core – the essential body, the body of truth.

Once you have tasted something of your inner bliss then you have the vision where to really search for, where to go now. Disappear into your innermost being and you will find it. Seek, and you will miss. Don’t seek, and find.

Not knowing it is near, they seek it afar. What a pity
It is like one in the water who cries out for thirst;
It is like the child of a rich house
Who has strayed away among the poor.

And has forgotten that he is rich – may have become a beggar. You are rich, infinitely rich. You are all emperors and empresses, gods and godesses. Just recognize. Don’t get too much into begging – and desire creates the beggar. Even a man like Alexander is a beggar, because the desire is there. A man like Napoleon is a beggar, because the desire is there. See the richest people of this earth and you will see just beggars and nothing else. And sometimes it happens, you come across a beggar and you see the emperor sitting there under the tree – having nothing, trot possessing anything.

Just possess yourself and you have possessed all. Be the master of yourself and you have become the master of all. Possessing things, you will remain a beggar. And people go on changing but not really transforming. You possess one thing, then you start possessing another thing, then you possess a third thing. Sometimes you start possessing other-worldly things, but nothing changes. Just form changes. Somebody possesses money and somebody starts possessing virtue. Now it is the same, not much difference. […]

I am not saying start striving to stop striving, otherwise you will simply change the name of your madness and you will remain the same. You will just change the label of your neurosis. There are people who are greedy for money and there are people who are greedy for God. It makes no difference at all, they are the same people. Greed is greed. It makes no difference about what greed is, for what greed is. Greed is greed.

Just see the point that striving is meaningless, that going anywhere is meaningless. Not because I am saying it – you have to see it: Ihi passika. You have to see it, you are not to believe it. Believing won’t help; believing is just a whitewash on the surface. Seeing brings transformation.

It is llike one in the water who cries out for thirst . . .

Hakuin says: You are crying for happiness, and you are like a fish in the water crying for water and crying, ‘I am thirsty.’ You have it! And you are begging everywhere.

It is like the child of a rich house
Who has strayed away among the poor.
The cause of our circling through the six worlds
Is that we are on the dark paths of ignorance.
Dark path upon dark path treading,
When shall we escape from birth-and-death?

What is the dark path of ignorance? Looking outward. The farther you look, the more darkness. Because the light burns inside you. Looking closer and closer, and there is more light. That’s why we call a Buddha ‘enlightened’ – he has come to know and realize his light. It is a perpetual light – without any fuel it is there, it cannot be exhausted. Suns will be exhausted and the moons will be exhausted and the stars will be exhausted. But the light that burns inside you as consciousness is inexhaustible. It is eternal. […]

That’s why Buddhas go on giving you whatsoever they have attained, go on shaking. Because the beauty of it is in sharing. That’s why Hakuin has sung this song. That’s why I am here, sharing my being with you, my joy with you, my celebration with you. It is something that has to be shared to keep it alive. It is something that has to be given. The more you give it, the more you have of it.

Never be a miser in your love and in your understanding. Share it. And you will have more and more of it. Don’t hoard it, otherwise you will miss it. One day you will find it has disappeared and there is nothing but stink left. Instead of fragrance there will be stinking. Share your love with everybody and anybody. Don’t make conditions to your love. And the best way to share is to share your understanding, to share your meditation.

Hakuin is doing that in this song. He’s sharing his Buddhahood. What he has known, he is singing about it, he is praising it. He is making it clear to people who have not yet attained but CAN attain. Maybe somebody hears the song, somebody is struck by it, stabbed in the very heart by it. It is a lion’s roar: somebody may be awakened out of his sleep.

The cause of our circling through the six worlds
Is that we are on the dark paths of ignorance.
Dark path upon dark path treading,
When shall we escape from birth and death?

Birth means getting attached to the physical body. Death means the frustration of that attachment to the body. Getting free of birth and death means getting free of the physical body. But how can you be free from the physical body? Unless you know the second body you will not be free from the physical body. So it is not a question of being free from the physical body; the basic question is how to enter into the second body. Once you are in the second you are free from the first. And once you are in the third you are free from the second too.

That’s why you don’t see Buddha laughing. Not that he didn’t laugh, but he has not been shown as laughing. Because in the third body, the body of truth, even bliss is meaningless. First, the body, the physical body, is the body of misery. Attached to the physical body you remain miserable. The second body is the body of bliss. Once you reach to it, all misery disappears, you are blissful. But bliss is the opposite of misery – part of duality. The body of truth goes beyond both, it is transcendental. Misery has disappeared, so what is the point of keeping bliss? When there is no misery, there is no point in bliss. When poverty has disappeared what is the point of holding richness? Even that can be dispossessed.

When all duality disappears – pleasure and pain, happiness, unhappiness, day and night, life and death – then for the first time you are in God.

The Zen meditation of the Mahayana
Is beyond all our praises.
Giving and morality and the other perfections,
Taking of the name, repentance, discipline,
And the many other right actions,
All come back to the practice of meditation.

Hakuin says: All that has been done in the name of religion down the ages, can be reduced to one single thing, and that is meditation – dhyana. And what is dhyana? Becoming aware of your physical body – the first dhyana, the first step of meditation. Becoming watchful of your physical body. Watch yourself walking, watch yourself eating, watch yourself running, talking, listening. Watch. And through watching you will see you are different from the physical body. Because the watcher cannot be the watched, the observer cannot be the observed, the seer cannot be the seen, the knower cannot be the known.

Watch the physical body, and the second body will arise. It is there – but you will start feeling. You will start recognizing it, it will start penetrating you. This is the first step of meditation: watch the physical body. Then the second step, and the last, is: watch the bliss body. Watch your ecstasy. And then you will suddenly see, the watcher cannot be the watched. ‘Ecstasy is there, but I am far away from it. Bliss is there, but I am the knower of it.’

Then you start getting into the third body, the body of truth. Then you become a pure witness – sakshin. And that is liberation. Hakuin says it happens through meditation that you discover, or rediscover, your Buddhahood.

By the merit of a single sitting
He destroys innumerable accumulated sins.
How should there be wrong paths for him?

And just in a single sitting it can happen. Hakuin does not preach the gradual path, Hakuin preaches the sudden path. It can happen in a single moment. It can happen now. You need not postpone it for tomorrow. Who knows? Tomorrow may never come. It never comes, really. It can happen this very moment. If your awareness is lucid, if your awareness is there, clear, crystal-clear, it can happen this very moment. This very sitting, and you can become a Buddha. And nobody is hindering the path except yourself. Nobody is the enemy except yourself, and nobody is the friend either.

By the merit of a single sitting
He destroys innumerable accumulated sins.

Hakuin says: Don’t be worried about sins and your past karma. In a single sitting of meditation, all that can be burnt. The fire of meditation is so potential, it can burn your whole past in a single moment. There is no need to be worried about past karma – ‘I have done some bad, so I have to suffer. I have done something, so I have to go to Hell.’ If you want to go, you will have to go! But these are all rationalizations that you are trying to find. If you wish, it is your wish – it will be fulfilled. This existence is very obliging. It goes on obliging – if you want to go to Hell, it supports. It says, ‘Go! I am all with you.’

But if you decide that ‘Enough is enough, and I have suffered enough,’ a single moment of meditativeness is enough to burn all your millions of past lives and millions of future lives too. You are released.

Start meditating. First on the body. Then on your inner feelings of bliss, joy. And go moving inwards. And one day the song of Hakuin will burst forth in you too. You will flower. And unless you flower you have not lived, or lived in vain. You are here to bloom. And unless you bear much fruit and much flowers you will go on missing the meaning of life.

People come to me and they ask, ‘What is the meaning of life’ As if meaning is there somewhere sold in the market. As if meaning is a commodity. Meaning has to be created. There is no meaning in life. Meaning is not a given thing; it has to be created. It has to become your inner work. Then there is meaning – and there is great meaning.

Love and meditate and you will attain to meaning. And you will attain to life, and abundant life.

-Osho

From This Very Body the Buddha, Discourse #1

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.

My Deepest Secret

What to do when my heart and mind are in the midst of tremendous turmoil, confusion, anger, disappointment?

I find a not uncomfortable place to sit and in that sitting just give a little space and time for all of the turmoil to completely reveal itself, the swirling thoughts, the clouds of despair, the murkiness of confusion, the fire of anger, and without turning away, I remain staying with it all. And the key, the most important key, is that I do not try to end any of this. I do not engage in thought to rationalize, I do not push away that which is uncomfortable, nor judge my feelings, I do not analyze why all of this is happening, nor jump onto the bandwagon and go for a ride into the maelstrom, but simply allow all of the thoughts and even more importantly all of the sensations and feelings that come along. And these too are allowed without judging, without hanging on to those that I like and without pushing away those that are uncomfortable. There is no spiritual bypassing of anything that arises. It is all welcome.

But of course, this is not true, I do, do all of those things. I do judge, I do push away, I do grasp, I do analyze, but by seeing that I am doing them, a little space opens up for love. And again, I am back to watching the whole drama but with just a little bit more awareness, a little bit freer of the grasping clutches of mind and emotion. But once again, the cycle repeats itself, not just once or twice but many times. But with each return to center the gap has widened.

And sometimes, there does come those special moments when the thoughts subside completely, when the hot feelings turn into “a peace that passeth all understanding.” In those moments there are no conclusions, just a remaining in a vast unknownness, and there is a gratefulness to all that has preceded, all that has contributed to creating this opportunity, to all that has led to this moment and I bow down to existence.

This secret is the art of watching, the art of witnessing, and it is the greatest gift that I received from Osho, but it is not unique to him. Below is a post where the Zen Master, Charlotte Joko Beck, who lived for some time in Prescott, AZ, describes a similar process which she names, get “a bigger container.”

-purushottama

A Bigger Container – Charlotte Joko Beck

Surrendering to Nobody – Osho

You say that religion is total freedom or moksha, and you also stress the importance of surrender in religion. But are not freedom and surrender contradictory in terms?

They appear contradictory but they are not. And they appear so because of the language; existentially they are not. Try to understand two things. First: you cannot be free remaining as you are, because as you are is your bondage. Your ego i s the bondage. You can be free only when this ego point disappears – this ego point is the bondage.

When there is no ego, you become one with existence, and only that oneness can be freedom. While you exist separate, this separation is false. Really, you are not separate; you cannot be. You are part of existence – and not a mechanical part, but an organic part. You cannot exist for a single moment separated from existence. You breathe it every moment; it breathes you every moment. You live in a cosmic whole.

Your ego gives you a false feeling of separate existence. Because of that false feeling, you start fighting existence. When you fight you are in bondage. When you fight you are bound to be defeated, because the part cannot win against the whole. And because of this fight with the whole, you feel in bondage; everywhere limited. Wherever you move, a wall comes. That wall is nowhere in existence – it moves with your ego; it is part of your separate feeling. Then you struggle against existence. In that struggle you will be defeated constantly; in that defeat you feel bondage, limitation.

By surrender it is meant that you surrender the ego, you surrender the separating wall, you become one. That is reality, so whatsoever you are surrendering is just a dream, a concept, a false notion. You are not surrendering reality; you are just surrendering a false attitude. The moment you surrender this false attitude you become one with existence. Then there is no conflict.

And if there is no conflict you have no limitation; nowhere there comes a bondage, a boundary. You are not separate. You cannot be defeated, because there is no one to be defeated. You cannot die, because there is no one to die. You cannot be in misery, because there is no one to be in misery. The moment you surrender the ego, the whole nonsense is surrendered – misery, bondage, dukkha, hell – everything is surrendered. You become one with existence. This oneness is freedom.

Separation is bondage. Oneness is freedom Not that you become free, remember this – you are no more. So it is not that you become free – you are no more. Really, when you are not, freedom is. How to express it is a problem. When you are not, freedom is. Buddha is reported to have said, ‘You are not going to be in bliss. When you are not, the bliss is. You are not going to be liberated. You are going to be liberated from yourself.’

So freedom is not freedom of the ego. Freedom is freedom from the ego. And if you can understand this – that freedom is freedom from the ego – then surrender and freedom become one, then they mean one. But if you take the ego as the standpoint from which to think, then the ego will say, ‘Why surrender? – because if you surrender, then you cannot be free. Then you become a slave. When you surrender, you become a slave.’

But really, you are not surrendering to someone. This is the second point to be understood: you are not surrendering to someone; you are simply surrendering. There is no one who will take your surrender. If there is someone and you surrender to him, then it is a sort of slavery. Really, there is not even a god to whom you are surrendering. And when we talk about a god, that is just to find you something to help you to surrender.

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, God is talked about just to help you to surrender. There is no God. Patanjali says there is no God, but it will be difficult for you to surrender to one; it will be difficult for you to simply surrender. To help surrender, God is talked about. So God is just a method. This is rare, very scientific – God is just a method to help you surrender. There is no one who is going to take your surrender. If there is someone and you surrender, then it is a slavery, a bondage. This is a very subtle and deep point: there is no God as a person; God is just a way, a method, a technique.

Patanjali relates many techniques. One of them is ishwara prandihan – the idea of God. There are many methods to reach the surrender; one method is the idea of God. That will help your mind to surrender, because if I say, ‘Surrender,’ you will ask, ‘To whom?’ If I say, ‘Simply surrender,’ it will be difficult for you to conceive. Try to understand in a different way. If I say to you, ‘Simply love,’ you will ask, ‘Whom? What do you mean by “simply love”? If there is no one to be loved, how to love?’ If I say, ‘Pray,’ then you will ask, ‘To whom? Worship to whom?’ Your mind cannot conceive non-duality. It will ask, it will raise a question, ‘To whom?’

Just to help your mind, so that the mind’s question is satisfied, Patanjali says that God is just a way, a technique. Worship, love, surrender – to whom? Patanjali says, ‘To God.’ Because if you surrender, then you will come to know that there is no God – or you yourself are that to which you have surrendered. But this will happen when you have surrendered. God is just a trick.

It is said that even to surrender to a god who is nowhere seen, who is invisible, is difficult, so scriptures say, ‘Surrender to the guru, to the master.’ The master is visible and a person, so then the question becomes relevant – if you surrender to a master then it is a slavery, because a person is there and you are surrendering to him. But then too you will have to understand again a very subtle point – even more subtle than the notion of God. A master is a master only when he is not. If he is, then he is not a master. A master becomes a master only when he is not. He has achieved non-being; there is no one.

If someone is sitting here in this chair, then there is no master; then it is going to become a slavery. But if there is no one sitting in this chair, a non-being, one who is not centered anywhere, one who has surrendered – not to anyone, but simply surrendered and achieved non-being, has become a non-person – who is simply there, not concentrated in an ego, diffused, not concentrated anywhere, then he can become a master. So when you are surrendering to a master, again you are surrendering to nobody.

This is a deep question for you. When you are surrendering, if you can understand that this is simply surrendering, not a surrender – surrendering, not a surrender. . . A surrender is to someone. A surrendering is something on your part. So the basic thing is surrendering – the act, not the object. The object should not be important, but the one who is surrendering is important. The object is just an excuse – just an excuse.

If you can understand, then there is no need to surrender to anyone – you can simply surrender. Then there is no need to love someone – you can simply love. You are significant, not the object. If the object is significant, you will create a bondage out of it. So even a god who is not, will become a bondage; even a master who is not, will become a bondage. But that bondage is created by you; it is a misunderstanding. Otherwise surrendering is freedom. They are not contradictory.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #60, Q1

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

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.

Feel Alone and Feel Love – Osho

Never before have I felt so much love and never before so alone. Thank you, Osho…

Prem Turiya, it is something very deep to be understood, something of great significance. Love always brings aloneness. Aloneness always brings love. They are never separate.

People think just the opposite. People think, “When you are in love, how can you be alone?” They don’t make any distinction between two words: loneliness and aloneness. Hence the confusion.

When you are in love, you cannot be lonely; that is true. But when you are in love, you are bound to be alone — that is even far truer. Loneliness is a negative state. Loneliness means you are hankering for the other. Loneliness means you are dark, dismal, in despair. Loneliness means you are frightened. Loneliness means you are feeling left behind. Loneliness means nobody needs you. It hurts. Loneliness is like a wound.

Aloneness is like a flower. I know your dictionaries will say that loneliness and aloneness are synonyms — they are not. They are totally different phenomena. Loneliness is a wound and can turn into a cancer. Many more people die of loneliness than of any other disease. The world is full of lonely people, and because of their loneliness they go on doing all kinds of stupid things to somehow stuff that wound, that hollowness, that emptiness, that negativity.

The lonely person starts eating too much, just to feel full. The lonely person starts gathering fat. The lonely person starts taking alcohol or other drugs, from soma to LSD — because he wants to forget himself the loneliness is so ugly, so scary, so deathlike that one wants to escape from it. The lonely person sits before his TV glued to the chair for four, five, even six hours. The average American sits for six hours before the TV — just burning his eyes. But what else to do? Where to go? With whom to commune?

Communication has stopped. People are not talking to each other; at the most they talk at the other, but not to the other. People have forgotten how to reach the other; people have become parallel lines, running very close but meeting nowhere. Even husbands and wives, even friends, even so-called lovers, are parallel lines never meeting anywhere. Running very close, hoping that tomorrow the meeting will happen, but that is just a hope, that is just an illusion. That keeps people somehow going on.

It is like if you go to the rail-track and you see the rails running parallel — far away in the distance they appear to be meeting, but they never meet. You can go to that place and you will not find them meeting. As you move closer, the meeting-point will move farther away. The distance between you and the so-called meeting-point will remain the same.

The world is very lonely; hence people go into drugs or into sex, or into any kind of entertainment that keeps them, at least for the time being, forgetful of the loneliness. The wound is oozing with pus. We hide it in many ways — with great possessions, with a big palace, with much money, with new gadgets — but the wound continues, gadgets won’t hide it. You can have the biggest house in the world and still you will be as lonely in it as you were in your small cottage. It is not going to make any difference — possessions cannot change your inner loneliness.

And then people go on relating with others, but because they are both lonely, relationship is not possible; relationship cannot grow out of need. Relationship grows only out of overflowing energies, never out of needs. If one person is needy and the other is also needy, then both will try to exploit the other. The relationship will be that of exploitation, not of love, not of compassion. It will not be of friendship. It will be a kind of enmity — very bitter, but sugar-coated. And sooner or later, the sugar wears out; by the time the honeymoon is over the sugar is gone and all is bitter. And now they are caught. First, they used to be lonely separately, now they are lonely together — which hurts even more. Just see a husband and a wife sitting in the room, both lonely. On the surface together, deep down lonely. The husband lost in his own loneliness, the wife lost in her own loneliness. The saddest thing in the world is to see two lovers, a couple, and both lonely — the saddest thing in the world!

Aloneness is totally different. Aloneness is a flower, a lotus blooming in your heart.

Aloneness is positive, aloneness is health. It is the joy of being yourself. It is the joy of having your own space.

Yes, when you are in love, Turiya, you feel aloneness. Aloneness is beautiful, aloneness is a blessing. But only lovers can feel it, because only love gives you the courage to be alone, only love creates the context to be alone. Only love fulfills you so deeply that you are no more in need of the other — you can be alone. Love makes you so integrated that you can be alone and ecstatic. Love becomes the contrast: love and aloneness are two polarities of one energy.

And it is good to understand it, because sometimes it happens that lovers don’t allow each other space enough to be alone. If lovers don’t allow each other space to be alone, then love will be destroyed, because it is out of aloneness that love gets fresh energy, fresh juices. When you are alone, you accumulate energy to a point from where it starts overflowing.

That overflowing becomes love — then you can go and share with your friend, with your woman, with anybody you love. You have enough to share now; in fact, too much — you have to share. And it is not that you are obliging the other; in fact, you are being obliged by the other. When the cloud is heavy it has to rain, and it is grateful to the earth that it allowed it to rain, that it absorbed it, that it received it like a guest, that it welcomed it. When the flower opens, it has to release its fragrance. It is thankful to the winds that they have taken its fragrance in all directions.

When alone, one gathers energy. Energy is life and energy is delight, and energy is love and energy is dance and energy is celebration. Then everything is possible if energy is there.

Then it will become a song, then it will become a dance, then it will become love. And when energy is too much there, only then can it become orgasmic.

Many people make love but have no idea of what orgasm is, because they are already dissipated. When they are making love, they are empty; when they are making love there is no energy to be shared. When they are making love, they cannot overflow. Their orgasm is at the most genital. Their orgasm is a very small, mediocre thing; nothing of any spiritual value. It is like a sneeze. Yes, after a sneeze you feel a little better. Or like scratching your back — it feels good. You are relieved.

Orgasm is not a relief: orgasm is a celebration. And orgasm is a meeting of you, through the other, with the whole. Orgasm is always divine — the other becomes the door and you enter into the divine. Orgasm is always spiritual; it is never sexual. Those who think that orgasm is sexual have not understood anything at all; they don’t know anything about sex and they don’t know anything about orgasmic experiences. Orgasm is always samadhi, ecstasy. But people don’t know because they meet out of need, not out of overflowing energies.

So when you are in love, a great need arises to be alone — only in love, remember, a great need arises to be alone. And real lovers are those who give freedom to the other to be alone. They will be full of energy soon and they will come together and shower their energy on each other. When alone, the great desire to share will arise. See the rhythm: when in love, you would like to be alone; when alone, soon you would like to be in love. Lovers come close and go away, come close and go away — there is a rhythm. Going away is not anti-love; going away is just getting your aloneness again, and the beauty of it and the joy of it. But whenever you are full of joy, an intrinsic, inevitable necessity arises to share it. Nobody can contain joy — and the joy that can be contained by you is not of much worth. The joy is bigger than you, it cannot be contained by you. It is a flood! You cannot contain it; you have to seek and search for people to share it with.

What happens in your love affairs happens on a higher plane to all the Buddhas. When Buddha became enlightened, he became so full of energy, so full of joy, that he had to share it. For forty-two years he went from one village to another, constantly sharing his joy.

That’s what I am doing with you. I am not a teacher. I have nothing to teach, no teaching to impart, no information … but I am here to share my being. I am too full, the cloud is too heavy. And if you can receive me, I will be grateful to you.

It is out of too much that sharing arises. And enlightenment, Buddhahood, Christ-consciousness, bridge you with the God. Infinite sources of energy become available to you. Inexhaustible sources are yours. You can go on sharing, and the more you share, the more goes on coming to you.

Aloneness has reached its ultimate peak. The Master is the most alone person in the world, and hence the Master is the greatest lover in the world. You cannot find a greater lover than a Buddha or a Christ. But now the love is so qualitatively different that it has the quality of friendship, compassion, empathy. The passion has disappeared.

Passion is tiny, small; compassion is immense, huge, enormous, infinite. When passion becomes infinite it is compassion.

Turiya, your experience is beautiful, and you have understood its beauty; hence, you have felt like thanking me.

You say: Never before have I felt so much love and never before so alone. Those are two aspects of the same coin.

And you say: Thank you, Osho.

You have understood it. I am happy that you have been able to see the connection between love and aloneness. Enjoy both. Never choose one out of the two, because if you choose one both will die. Allow both to happen. When aloneness happens, move into it; when love happens, move into it. Aloneness means moving in, love means moving out.

Aloneness is the breath going in, love is the breath going out. And if you stop one, you will die. You cannot hold the breath in; you cannot hold the breath out. Breathing is a total process, and in the total process the incoming breath is as much essential as the outgoing breath. Love is the outgoing breath; aloneness is the incoming breath. And that’s how your soul lives; that’s how you become soulful.

Allow both. Never choose! Choicelessly allow both. And go with wherever the breath is going. Aloneness is interiority, love is exteriority.

Carl Gustav Jung has made these words very famous. He divided people basically into two types: the introverts and the extroverts. That is a wrong division. People cannot be categorized that way. People cannot be pigeon-holed this way. I have never come across anyone who is just introvert — he will die immediately, because he will have only the in-breath. I have never come across a person who is just extrovert — he will die too. People are both.

It is possible that one is more of an extrovert than an introvert, and vice versa. And that’s what brings imbalance to your personality. One should be both simultaneously. One should be balanced.

My sannyasins have to be extrovert introverts, introvert extroverts — both together. This is one of the most important things to be understood, because in the past the monks have tried to be just introverts. They were called the other-worldly people, the people who renounce the world and move into the monasteries and the mountains and the deserts. They decided that only to be an introvert is the right way to connect with God — as if God is not without, but only within.

And the other, the worldly person, has remained extrovert. He thinks he has nothing to do with introversion, meditation, prayer. His interest is in money, power, prestige, people, crowds — the world. He never looks in. This is a very schizophrenic arrangement.

I would like my sannyasins not to be schizophrenic but whole. Be in the world and yet be not of it. Move between the outside and the inside, and let the movement become as smooth as possible, as simple as possible. Just as you come out of your house into the garden: it is too cold inside, you come out. It is too sunny outside; soon you start feeling hot, soon you start perspiring, and you move in — into the house, into the coolness and the shade of the house. Just as you move inside the house and outside the house, go on moving in and out — both are yours.

The old sannyasins, the old monks, claimed only the inner, they denied the outer. My message is: Nothing has to be denied — the whole belongs to you. I give you the whole universe, the inner and the outer both. And I would not like you to become introverts, because those who are introverts against extroversion become ill, pathological, dormant, stagnant, closed, disconnected, uprooted. They start living a windowless existence. They start living in unnecessary misery. They never come to know what aloneness is, because aloneness cannot be known without love — they only know loneliness. And loneliness is not health; loneliness is illness.

And the people who live only in the outside world and never think of the inner, they are on the other extreme. They know something of love, but their love is never more than lust — because love cannot happen unless aloneness has also happened in you. Their love is a beautiful name for lust. They need the other, they exploit the other, they possess the other. And when you possess the other, the other possesses you. People become slaves, and people are reduced to things. People are no more people.

The person who lives only on the outside, without knowing his inside, is poor, very poor — unaware of his inner treasures. And the person who lives only in the inside is also poor, because he never becomes aware of the beauty of existence, of the stars, of the sands and the sun, of the trees and the birds.

The inner and the outer are not two. The inner is the inner of the outer, and the outer is the outer of the inner. My sannyasin has to be both together. I would like to create a new man whom Carl Gustav Jung cannot categorize, whom he cannot call extrovert or introvert, for whom he will have to find a new word — because he will be whole, he will be both. He will be as much in his body as in his soul; he will be a materialist as much as a spiritualist. He will be of this world as much as of that, and he will have no division in his mind, and no choice.

Turiya, something beautiful has happened to you go on moving in the same direction.

Don’t go astray, because it is very easy to go astray. Our old habits, our old concepts, go on dragging us back to the old patterns. Your mind will say, “This is not aloneness, this is loneliness.” Your mind will try to destroy it by calling it loneliness. Beware! Beware of your own mind! because there is no greater enemy than your own mind.

And by ‘mind’ I mean your past. Go on dying to the past and go on learning new things.

You have stumbled upon something tremendously valuable, utterly new and fresh. Love brings aloneness: aloneness brings love. That too will happen.

Now you have said: Never before have I felt so much love and never before so alone.

I would like each of my sannyasins to feel like Turiya — feel alone and feel love. And never create any conflict between the two. Create a symphony out of the two, and you will have a richness which is very rare.

-Osho

From The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty, Discourse #2

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.

Learn Waiting, Pure Waiting – Osho

At times I feel like I can just sit silently and wait for eternity – and other times like sobbing with the futility of sitting outside a gate I cannot even see – frozen between action and inaction. Does one miss by demanding? Is impatience a lack of trust?

One misses only by demanding. Demanding means that will is still there: you would like to have things your own way, you are still deciding how things should be. Then, naturally, if things are not like that, impatience arises; and if the demands are not fulfilled… frustration, anger, rage. And if it goes on and on, sooner or later you lose interest. You start thinking ‘This is impossible. All this talk about enlightenment, nirvana is impossible.’ You start finding ways of escaping from it; of getting back into the world, into the meaningless trivia, the mundane, the mediocre; of getting occupied – at least one is occupied, one has no time to think that things are futile. Sitting and waiting, again and again the idea arises ‘What are you doing here?’ The door has not opened yet – not only that, but you don’t know whether the door exists or not. The door is there just in front of you, but because of the demanding mode of your mind you cannot see it. The demanding mode of the mind keeps you blind. The door opens only for those who are in a non-demanding mode. Demand means imposing your will on existence.

And the existence is not willing for that. And it is good that it is not willing for that; otherwise, just as you are neurotic, the whole would go neurotic. So many wills imposing themselves upon existence, and if the existence were to yield to each and everybody’s desire… Just think what would happen: the whole would start falling into parts. There would be so many contradictory demands on it that those demands would drive it mad. If God is still sane the only reason is that nobody’s demands are ever fulfilled; nobody’s demand is ever even heard.

Prayers reach to him only when they are non-demanding. If there is even a hidden demand somewhere, that very demand makes the prayer so heavy that it cannot leave the earth. When there is no demand then it is weightless, then it can rise; then the gravitation has no effect on it, then it can go to the highest, to the deepest core of existence.

Only those prayers are heard which are nothing but jubilations, ‘alleluia’, for no particular reason. Only those prayers are heard which are nothing but thanks.

And, remember it, a mind which is entangled in thinking never comes to the point where thanking can happen. Thinking becomes a bar, a hindrance, to thanking. Either you can be thinking or you can be thanking, but you cannot be both together. Thanking arises out of non-thinking, and a demanding mind cannot afford to be non-thinking. He has to think, he has to work out… He has a demand that has to be fulfilled – he is after it, he is chasing it, he is putting everything at stake.

God is absolutely deaf to the prayers which demand, but God is absolutely open to the prayers which have no demand.

Krishna Gopa, you ask: At times I feel like I can just sit silently and wait for eternity – and other times like sobbing with the futility of sitting outside a gate I cannot even see – frozen between action and inaction.

Those are the great moments, when you are frozen between action and inaction. Remain frozen. Don’t do anything, just remain in that moment. You are on the verge of a new birth. If you can wait, a new life will arise – what Taoists call wei wu wei, action without action. And that happens only when you are frozen between action and inaction, if you choose you miss that birth. If you can remain frozen, don’t choose – so what? Remain in that moment. It is arduous for the mind because the mind starts feeling suffocated, the mind says ‘Do something, something has to be done. Anything will do, but do something. Don’t remain frozen here, you will die.’ You are not dying, the mind is dying, the ego is dying. The ego says ‘Do something – at least meditate, chant the name of God, pray. Do something.’ And if you do something, you have moved into action again.

These are rare moments, Gopa, when there is no action and no inaction, and you are frozen. Not that you are lethargic, so there is no inaction; you have energy, but the energy is not going anywhere because there is no goal left. The energy is simply there like a reservoir rising higher and higher, becoming greater and greater. You are ready to explode into something, into something absolutely new, of which you cannot even dream. You are on the verge of a new mode of life: action in inaction. Then a new activity starts in which you are not the actor, in which you are only a vehicle, a passage.

But I know those moments are hard, I have passed through those moments just as you are passing. One thing only can I say to help you: that they pass. But great patience is a must. Don’t be impatient, the impatience comes from the mind. The mind starts saying ‘Do something! Become occupied with something!’ because mind cannot exist without occupation, mind IS occupation. When there is no occupation there is no mind; suddenly you are silent, suddenly you arrive at the primal awareness. That’s what Buddhists call ‘Buddha-nature’. There is nothing to do, nothing to think; you are, but your being is just a pure mirroring, watching, waiting. And not waiting for something in particular because you don’t know where the gate is, you don’t know what is going to happen. So it is not a question of waiting for something; if you wait for something, you wait for Godot.

Waiting has to be pure. Enjoy waiting for itself, for its own sake. Don’t you see the beauty of just waiting – the purity of it, the benediction of it, the innocence of it – just waiting, not even capable of answering for what? See the point of it: pure waiting, not knowing what is going to happen. If you know what is going to happen that will be supplied by your past, it will be a continuity with the past; it will not be new. Maybe modified, but it will be again the same thing, it will be a repetition. How can you know what is going to happen? You have not known it before so how can you even imagine it?

Finding that there is no way to imagine the future, no way to imagine the unknown, the known ceases, all ideas in the mind disappear – ideas about God, ideas about samadhi, enlightenment. All disappears; in that disappearance is enlightenment. Never think for a single moment that your idea of enlightenment is going to be fulfilled. How can you have any idea of enlightenment? And whatsoever idea you have is going to be wrong.

When enlightenment happens, you will be surprised. You had read all the scriptures, and it wasn’t mentioned anywhere. It can’t be mentioned. You will be surprised. You have been hearing me year in, year out, and I had never mentioned it. I am trying, but it can’t be done in the very nature of the case. I am trying to do it in a thousand and one ways, but they are only indications… But when you arrive at the reality of it, when it explodes in you, then you will know that no Buddha has ever been able to say it. And then you will know that nobody is ever going to say it. It has remained unuttered.

And it is good that it has remained unuttered; otherwise, it would never be a new phenomenon to anybody. Millions of Buddhas have happened and they have talked about it and talked about it; you already know about it – and then it happens. It may be just something known, then it will not be a break-through, it will not be a discontinuity, it can’t be utterly new and radical.

It is utterly new and utterly radical.

So, waiting has to be with no idea for what. A real waiter cannot answer the question for what he is waiting; he can only shrug his shoulders, he can say ’I don’t know.’ But one thing is certain: that waiting is infinitely beautiful, waiting is infinitely joyous. When the whole turmoil disappears and it is all silence, it has a beauty of its own.

You ask me: Does one miss by demanding?

Certainly, absolutely. Demand has to be dropped.

Is impatience a lack of trust?

Yes, certainly, absolutely. Impatience simply means you can’t trust existence, you have to do something. You can’t just sit there and trust that it will happen when you are ripe; that when spring comes, the grass will grow of its own accord. You cannot trust; you have to pull the grass from the earth. You cannot wait like a farmer who has thrown his seeds into the soil and they have disappeared, and now he does not know anymore where they are, whether they are going to grow into plants, whether they are ever going to ripen.

Think of a farmer. He has lost the seeds that he had. He waits, he silently waits; he trusts, he trusts nature. ‘Soon the clouds will be coming, soon there will be great greenery all around and the seeds will start sprouting. They will become alive, they will come out of their slumber, they will again like to see the sun and the rain – it is going to happen.’ He trusts, it is just trust.

A meditator is a farmer. And, of course, he has to trust the ultimate nature of existence. Wait. Waiting is like a seed, waiting is the seed, the seed of enlightenment. If you can wait in its time – and you cannot decide the time – in its season, and you don’t know in what season… Because it differs, it differs from individual to individual.

Mahavir became enlightened on an absolutely dark night when there was no moon; Buddha became enlightened on a full-moon night. Once a Jaina came to me and he asked ’Why this difference? Is there something in it? Why did Mahavir become enlightened on a dark night with no moon? Why did Buddha become enlightened on a full-moon night? They are polar opposites. It is not just accidental; Buddha and Mahavir are polar opposites – contemporaries, but polar opposites. Mahavir is a man who struggles, who goes as deeply as possible in the will, by the will. He surrenders only at the last moment. His whole journey is a struggle; hence he is called Mahavir; the word means ‘the great warrior’. He is a warrior: his path is that of sankalpa, that of struggle, will, war. He goes on refining his will, he goes on and on sophisticating his will, making it more subtle, more purified. He has to surrender it – finally one has to surrender it – but he surrenders it only at the last moment when he has done all that he can do. Buddha is a totally different person: the man who arrives through let-go, the man who arrives through relaxing, the man who arrives not by fighting but by yielding.

They are totally different people; they will have different seasons of ripening, different seasons of blooming, different times. And nobody can say beforehand; it is unpredictable when your season will come, when it will be spring for you. One has to wait and one has to trust. Impatience is lack of trust.

Gopa, you have a subtle ego lurking somewhere in your unconscious. You have to become aware of it – that ego creates the problem, that ego surfaces again and again and you start demanding and you become impatient. And that is not your true nature. If it were your true nature I would have told you to become a warrior. Your real nature, your intrinsic quality, is not that of a warrior but of a lover.

But people are like that: divided, split. A part of your mind wants to fight, but the major part wants to relax. That’s why it happens that at times, you say, I feel like I can just silently sit and wait for eternity… That is your true nature – listen to it, get more and more into that – that is your real space, that is where your kingdom is. You have to explore this region more and more, you have to go into it. And when you start going into it and you start enjoying it and you start feeling that you can wait for eternity, the other part becomes worried. It is an intruder, a foreigner in your being; it is not your true being. That starts intruding, interfering; it comes and creates problems for you.

… and other times like sobbing with the futility of sitting outside a gate I cannot even see – frozen between action and inaction.

Avoid the other part. When I am saying avoid it, I am not saying repress it. If you repress it, it will become more and more powerful. By avoiding it I mean neglect it, ignore it, don’t nourish it anymore, don’t care about it. If it comes, take note of it but don’t get involved in it. Keep yourself aloof. Just know that it is an intruder.

I have looked in your eyes deeply, Gopa, in your being deeply. This is my reading about you: that you will come through love not through demanding, that you will come through relaxation not through willing, that you will come through waiting not through fighting. So you have to nourish that which is really your nature and you have to stop nourishing that which is not your real nature.

And how to decide what is your real nature? Whenever you are moving into your real nature you will feel happy, you will feel blissful. That is the criterion, remember it always. So whatsoever gives you joy, serenity, calmness, coolness – whatsoever makes you more centered – is your true nature.

That has to be nourished more and more, more care has to be taken about it; you have to pour your energies into it. And whenever you feel sad, depressed, angry, restless, that is not your real nature. You have to slowly, slowly disassociate yourself from this. Keep yourself aloof – just as when an uninvited guest comes to your home. It is an uninvited guest. And if you go on feeding both, you will get more and more into a kind of split; that’s how people become schizophrenic.

Learn waiting, pure waiting.

Martin Heidegger has said that pure waiting is openness, just openness – not in a particular direction, not toward a particular object, not for something special; just opening – opening to all the sides, to the whole of existence – a multi-dimensional opening. No object is consciously sought, you are not desiring anything; you are just waiting, open, for the unknown to happen, for the indefinable to happen. That’s God: the indefinable, the unknown and the unknowable. And the secret key to invite it is just to be in an open state, waiting with a throbbing heart, certainly, waiting with great love, but not knowing for what; waiting with great poetry in your being, waiting with a song, but not knowing for whom, for what.

This is sannyas, my sannyas. This is the space I would like all of you to enter.

Openness is the absence of single-perspective perceiving and thinking. Thinking is always one-dimensional; it moves in one direction; it is concentration. Waiting is meditation, not concentration. And if you have read in books and heard the so-called religious people saying again and again that ‘meditation is concentration’ you have to uncondition yourself about it; that is utter nonsense. Concentration is thinking; it is to move systematically into a certain thought, in a certain direction; it is directed, it is addressed. Concentration can only lead you towards the known – in a more systematic way of course, in a more scientific way of course – but only to the known. It is from the known to the known, it is never a revolution, it is never a quantum leap. It is from one conclusion to another conclusion, it is a refinement of the same thing, it is continuity.

Meditation is non-dimensional or multi-dimensional; it is overflowing in all directions. It is not directed towards any object, hence there is no demand, no desire. And how can there be thinking? Being is there, certainly, presence is there; you are there, very much you are there, but just like a sky without clouds, a mirror without dust – pulsating, alive, vital, open, waiting for the unknown. You can’t have any idea of it. That’s why I say if you are a Christian you will miss, because then you have an idea of God. If you are a Hindu, you will miss – then you have already concluded how God is. If you are a theist or an atheist you will miss, because you have already decided without experiencing.

Just wait without getting into any doctrine, any sect, any scripture. Just wait without thought. And let it happen! Obviously, great trust will be needed, and that is the function of being with a Master: to imbibe trust. What are you doing here sitting with me? Imbibing trust, learning how to be open. Sometimes you may be surprised why I go on talking every day. This is just a device to help you become more receptive: when you are listening to me you become more receptive. Listening has to be a kind of receptivity. Listening, you become open, you become all ears.

Have you watched one thing? Eyes are male, ears are female, that’s why eyes can offend. Have you ever heard of anybody’s ears offending you? They cannot offend. Eyes can rape; they are male, aggressive, violent. A man can look at you in such a way that he has violated you, that he has transgressed. Eyes can be used like swords; they are not just receptive, they are projective, they project. Ears can’t project, they simply receive, they are just open.

Talking to you every day is a message. The message is not in the content of my talk, the message is in the situation that it creates. The message is: become ears, become feminine, become open. Ears are just open, and you cannot even close them – nature has not provided for it. Eyes can be open or closed. Even while you are asleep the ears remain open – there is no other way, nature has not provided for it – they are pure opening. You may have heard again and again in the Jewish scriptures, Christian scriptures, Mohammedan scriptures, in the Vedas, that God has ‘been heard’.

Mohammed heard the Koran; he couldn’t see where it was happening from, who was saying it. And the prophets in ancient Israel had been hearing – they could not see, but they could hear. If you ask the psychoanalyst, he will say that these people are just neurotic, crazy; they have gone mad. But it is a symbol, and the followers have missed the meaning of it and the antagonists are missing the meaning of it. The message is only this: that God has entered in you through the feminine part of you, the ear.

The question is valid: if nothing can be said about truth, then why talk? Nothing can be said about truth, that is true; still, Buddhas have been talking so then there must be something else in it. That something else is this: just sitting by my side for one and a half hours, slowly, slowly a radical change happens in you. And you can see the shift. If you become a little more aware you will see the shift of your consciousness from the eyes towards the ears: from men you become women. Suddenly, the moment you start listening to me, you are no more male. And only those who shift like that listen.

For one and a half hours remaining continuously with me in a listening mode – open, receptive, non-interfering, non-projective – a great transfer is happening. They are just a device, these words: you become open, and my energy starts flowing in you. Imbibe it, digest it – the taste of it is trust – and more and more trust will arise. This kind of waiting is healing, stilling, strengthening.

Martin Heidegger comes very close to the Zen approach. Once he was asked ‘Then what in the world am I to do?’ Somebody asked him – he was talking about waiting and waiting and waiting, and naturally the question arose ‘Then what am I to do?’ He said ‘We are to do nothing but wait.’ But that is the greatest thing one can d0. Waiting is the greatest art – no craft is higher than that. It needs great courage, trust, great awareness, great love; it needs many things, only then one can wait.

Look into me, feel me, and learn how to wait. And one day, when the waiting has come to its optimum, it will happen. That’s how it has always happened.

-Osho

From The Sun Rises in the Evening, Discourse #2

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.

Oh Shiva, What is Your Reality? – Osho

First let us understand the questions, what Devi is asking.

Oh Shiva, what is your reality? Why this question? You can also ask this question, but it will not carry the same meaning. So try to understand why Devi asks, Oh Shiva, what is your reality? Devi is in deep love. When you are in deep love, for the first time you encounter the inner reality. Then Shiva is not the form, then Shiva is not the body. When you are in love, the body of the beloved falls away, disappears. The form is no more and the formless is revealed. You are facing an abyss. That is why we are so afraid of love. We can face a body, we can face a face, we can face a form, but we are afraid of facing an abyss.

If you love someone, if you really love, his body is bound to disappear. In some moments of climax, of peak, the form will dissolve, and through the beloved you will enter the formless. That is why we are afraid – it is falling into a bottomless abyss. So this question is not just a simple curiosity: Oh Shiva, what is your reality?

Devi must have fallen in love with the form. Things start that way. She must have loved this man as a man, and now when the love has come of age, when the love has flowered, this man has disappeared. He has become formless. Now he is to be found nowhere. Oh Shiva, what is your reality? It is a question asked in a very intense love moment. And when questions are raised, they become different according to the mind in which they are asked.

So create the situation, the milieu of the question in your mind. Devi must be at a loss – Shiva has disappeared. When love reaches its peak, the lover disappears. Why does this happen? This happens because really, everyone is formless. You are not a body. You move as a body, you live as a body, but you are not a body. When we see someone from the outside, he is a body. Love penetrates within. Then we are not seeing the person from the outside. Love can see a person as the person can see himself from within. Then the form disappears.

A Zen monk, Rinzai, attained his enlightenment, and the first thing he asked was, “Where is my body? Where has my body gone?” And he began to search. He called his disciples and said, “Go and find out where my body is. I have lost my body.”

He had entered the formless. You are also a formless existence, but you know yourself not directly, but from others’ eyes. You know through the mirror. Sometime, while looking in the mirror, close your eyes and then think, meditate: if there was no mirror, how could you have known your face? If there was no mirror, there would have been no face. You do not have a face; mirrors give you faces. Think of a world where there are no mirrors. You are alone – no mirror at all, not even others’ eyes working as mirrors. You are alone on a lonely island; nothing can mirror you. Then will you have any face? Or will you have any body? You cannot have one. You do not have one at all. We know ourselves only through others, and the others can only know the outer form. That is why we become identified with it. […]

Devi asks Shiva, Oh Shiva, what is your reality? – who are you? The form has disappeared; hence the question. In love you enter the other as himself. It is not you answering. You become one, and for the first time you know an abyss – a formless presence.

That is why for centuries together, centuries and centuries, we were not making any sculptures, any pictures of Shiva. We were only making Shivalina – the symbol. The Shivalinga is just a formless form. When you love someone, when you enter someone, he becomes just a luminous presence. The Shivalinga is just a luminous presence, just an aura of light.

That is why Devi asks, what is your reality?

What is this wonder-filled universe? We know the universe, but we never know it as wonder-filled. Children know, lovers know. Sometimes poets and madmen know. We do not know that the world is wonder-filled. Everything is just repetitive – no wonder, no poetry, just flat prose. It doesn’t create a song in you; it doesn’t create a dance in you; it doesn’t give birth to the poetry inside. The whole universe looks mechanical. Children look at it with wonder-filled eyes. When the eyes are wonder-filled, the universe is wonder-filled.

When you are in love, you again become like children. Jesus says, “Only those who are like children will enter my kingdom of God.” Why? Because if the universe is not a wonder, you cannot be religious. The universe can be explained – then your approach is scientific. The universe is either known or unknown, but that which is unknown can be known any day; it is not unknowable. The universe becomes unknowable, a mystery, only when your eyes are wonder-filled.

Devi says, what is this wonder-filled universe? Suddenly there is the jump from a personal question to a very impersonal one. She was asking, what is your reality? and then suddenly, what is this wonder-filled universe?

When form disappears, your beloved becomes the universe, the formless, the infinite. Suddenly Devi becomes aware that she is not asking a question about Shiva; she is asking a question about the whole universe. Now Shiva has become the whole universe. Now all the stars are moving in him, and the whole firmament and the whole space is surrounded by him. Now he is the great engulfing factor – “the great encompassing.” Karl Jaspers has defined God as “the great encompassing.”

When you enter into love, into a deep, intimate world of love, the person disappears, the form disappears, and the lover becomes just a door to the universe. Your curiosity can be a scientific one – then you have to approach through logic. Then you must not think of the formless. Then beware of the formless; then remain content with the form. Science is always concerned with the form. If anything formless is proposed to a scientific mind, he will cut it into form – unless it takes a form it is meaningless. First give it a form, a definite form; only then does the inquiry start.

In love, if there is form then there is no end to it. Dissolve the form! When things become formless, dizzy, without boundaries, everything entering another, the whole universe becoming a oneness, then only is it a wonder-filled universe.

What constitutes seed? Then Devi goes on. From the universe she goes on to ask, what is this wonder-filled universe? This formless, wonder-filled universe, from where does it come? From where does it originate? Or does it not originate? What is the seed?

Who centers the universal wheel? asks Devi. This wheel goes on moving and moving – this great change, this constant flux. But who centers this wheel? Where is the axis, the center, the unmoving center?

She doesn’t stop for any answer. She goes on asking as if she is not asking anyone, as if talking to herself.

What is this life beyond form pervading forms?

How may we enter it fully, above space and time, names and description?

Let my doubts be cleared. The emphasis is not on questions but on doubts: Let my doubts be cleared! This is very significant. If you are asking an intellectual question, you are asking for a definite answer so that your problem is solved. But Devi says, Let my doubts be cleared. She is not really asking about answers. She is asking for a transformation of her mind, because a doubting mind will remain a doubting mind whatsoever answers are given. Note it: a doubting mind will remain a doubting mind. Answers are irrelevant. If I give you one answer and you have a doubting mind, you will doubt it. If I give you another answer, you will doubt that also. You have a doubting mind. A doubting mind means you will put a question mark to anything.

So answers are useless. You ask me, “Who created the world?” and I tell you “A” created the world. Then you are bound to ask, “Who created ‘A’?” So, the real problem is not how to answer questions. The real problem is how to change the doubting mind, how to create a mind which is not doubting – or, which is trustful. So Devi says, let my doubts be cleared. […]

The doubting mind is the problem. Devi says, “Do not be concerned with my questions. I have asked so many things: What is your reality? What is this wonder-filled universe? What constitutes seed? Who centers the universal wheel? What is life beyond form? How can we enter it fully above time and space? But do not be concerned with my questions. Let my doubts be cleared. I ask these questions because they are in my mind. I ask them just to show you my mind, but do not pay much attention to them. Really, answers will not fulfill my need. My need is… let my doubts be cleared.”

But how can the doubts be cleared? Will any answer do? Is there any answer which will clear your doubts? Mind is the doubt. It is not that the mind doubts, mind is the doubt! Unless the mind dissolves, doubts cannot be cleared.

Shiva will answer. His answers are techniques – the oldest, most ancient techniques. But you can call them the latest also because nothing can be added to them. They are complete – one hundred and twelve techniques. They have taken in all the possibilities, all the ways of cleaning the mind, transcending the mind. Not a single method could be added to Shiva’s one hundred and twelve methods. And this book, Vigyana Bhairava Tantra, is five thousand years old. Nothing can be added; there is no possibility to add anything. It is exhaustive, complete. It is the most ancient and yet the latest, yet the newest. Old like old hills – the methods seem eternal – and they are new like a dewdrop before the sun, because they are so fresh.

These one hundred and twelve methods of meditation constitute the whole science of transforming mind. We will enter them one by one. We will try to comprehend first intellectually. But use your intellect only as an instrument, not as a master. Use it as an instrument to understand something, but do not go on creating barriers with it. When we will be talking about these techniques, just put aside your past knowledge, your knowing, whatsoever information you have collected. Put them aside – they are just dust gathered on the road.

Encounter these methods with a fresh mind – with alertness, of course, but not with argumentation.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #1

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.

A Cloud of Unknowing – Author Unknown

How a man’s love is wonderfully transformed in the interior experience of this nothingness and nowhere.

How wonderfully is a man’s love transformed by the interior experience of this nothingness and this nowhere. The first time he looks upon it, the sins of his whole life rise up before him. No evil thought, word, or deed remains hidden. Mysteriously and darkly they are burned into it. No matter where he turns, they confront him until after great effort, painful remorse, and many bitter tears he has largely rubbed them away.

At times the sight is as terrible as a glimpse of hell and he is tempted to despair of ever being healed and relieved of his sore burden. Many arrive at this juncture in the interior life but the terrible, comfortless agony they experience facing themselves drives them back to thoughts of worldly pleasures. They seek without for relief in things of the flesh, unable to bear the spiritual emptiness within. But they have not understood that they were not ready for the spiritual comfort which would have succored then had they waited.

He who patiently abides in this darkness will be comforted and feel again a confidence about his destiny, for gradually he will see his past sins healed by grace. The pain continues yet he knows it will end for even now it grows less intense. Slowly he begins to realize that the suffering he endures is really not hell at all, but his purgatory. Then will come a time when he recognizes in that nothingness no particular sin but only the lump of sin itself, which though but a formless mass is none other than himself; he sees that in himself it is the root and pain of original sin. When at other times he begins to feel a marvelous strengthening and untold delights of joy and goodness, he wonders if this nothingness is not some heavenly paradise after all. And finally, there will come a moment when he experiences such peace and repose in that darkness that he thinks it must be God himself.

Yes, he will suppose this nothingness to be one thing and another, yet to the last it will remain a cloud of unknowing between him and his God.

-unknown

From The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 69

Osho says about The Cloud of Unknowing:

“One of the most important statements about mysticism in the Western hemisphere is the book called The Cloud of Unknowing. The name of the author is not known; it is good that we don’t know who wrote it. It indicates one thing: that before he wrote it he had disappeared into a cloud of unknowing. It is the only book in the Western world which comes close to the Upanishads, The Tao Te Ching, The Dhammapada. There is a rare insight in it.

First he calls it a cloud. A cloud is vague, with no definable limits. It is constantly changing; it is not static – never, even for two consecutive moments, is it the same. It is a flux, it is pure change. And there is nothing substantial in it. If you hold it in your hand just mist will be left, nothing else. Maybe your hands will become wet, but you will not find any cloud in your fist.”

-Osho

From Theologia Mystica, Discourse #11

Surrender and 112 Meditation Techniques – Osho

On the path of surrender, how does the seeker come to the right technique out of one hundred and twelve methods?

On the path of will there are methods – these one hundred and twelve methods. On the path of surrender, surrender itself is the method, there are no other methods – remember this. All methods are non-surrendering, because a method means depending on yourself. You can do something; the technique is there, so you do it. On the path of surrender, you are no more, so you cannot do anything. You have done the ultimate, the last: you have surrendered. On the path of surrender, surrender is the only method.

All these one hundred and twelve methods require a certain will; they require something to be done by you. You manipulate your energy, you balance your energy, you create a center in your chaos. You do something. Your effort is significant, basic, required. On the path of surrender only one thing is required – you surrender. We will go deep into these one hundred and twelve methods, so it is good to say something about surrender because it has no method.

In these one hundred and twelve methods there will be nothing about surrender. Why has Shiva not said anything about surrender? Because nothing can be said. Bhairavi herself, Devi herself, has reached Shiva not through any method. She has simply surrendered. So this must be noted. She is asking these questions not for herself, these questions are asked for the whole humanity. She has attained Shiva. She is already in his lap; she is already embraced by him. She has become one with him, but still she is asking.

So remember one thing, she is not asking for herself; there is no need. She is asking for the whole humanity. But if she has attained, why is she asking Shiva? Can she herself not speak to the humanity? She has come through the path of surrender, so she doesn’t know anything about method. She herself has come through love; love is enough unto itself. Love doesn’t need anything more. She has come through love, so she doesn’t know anything about any methods, techniques. That is why she is asking.

So Shiva relates one hundred and twelve methods. He also will not talk about surrender because surrender is not a method really. You surrender only when every method has become futile, when you cannot reach by any method. You have tried your best. You have knocked on every door and no door opens, and you have passed through all the routes and no route reaches. You have done whatsoever you can do, and now you feel helpless. In that total helplessness surrender happens. So, on the path of surrender there is no method.

But what is surrender and how does it work? And if surrender works, then what is the need of one hundred and twelve methods? Then why go into them unnecessarily? – the mind will ask. Then okay! If surrender works, it is better to surrender. Why go on hankering after methods? And who knows whether a particular method will suit you or not? And it may take lives to find out. So, it is good to surrender, but it is difficult. It is the most difficult thing in the world.

Methods are not difficult. They are easy; you can train yourself. But for surrender you cannot train yourself… no training! You cannot ask how to surrender; the very question is absurd. How can you ask how to surrender? Can you ask how to love?

Either there is love or there is not, but you cannot ask how to love. And if someone tells you and teaches you how to love, remember, then you will never be capable of love. Once a technique is given to you for love, you will cling to the technique. That is why actors cannot love. They know so many techniques, so many methods – and we are all actors. Once you know the trick how to love, then love will not flower because you can create a facade, a deception. And with the deception you are out of it, not involved. You are protected.

Love is being totally open, vulnerable. It is dangerous. You become insecure. We cannot ask how to love; we cannot ask how to surrender. It happens! Love happens, surrender happens. Love and surrender are deeply one. But what is it? And if we cannot know how to surrender, at least we can know how we are maintaining ourselves from surrendering, how we are preventing ourselves from surrendering. That can be known and that is helpful.

How is it that you have not surrendered yet? What is your technique of non-surrendering? If you have not fallen in love yet, then the real problem is not how to love. The real problem is to dig deep to find out how you have lived without love, what is your trick, what is your technique, what is your structure – your defense structure, how you have lived without love. That can be understood, and that should be understood.

First thing: we live with the ego, in the ego, centered in the ego. I am without knowing who I am. I go on announcing, “I am.” This “I-am-ness” is false, because I do not know who I am. And unless I know who I am, how can I say “I”? This “I” is a false “I”. This false “I” is the ego. This is the defense. This protects you from surrendering.

You cannot surrender, but you can become aware of this defense measure. If you have become aware of it, it dissolves. By and by, you are not strengthening it, and one day you come to feel, “I am not.” The moment you come to feel “I am not,” surrender happens. So try to find out whether you are. Really, is there any center in you that you can call your “I”?. Go deep down within yourself, go on trying to find out where is this “I”, where is the abode of this ego.

Rinzai went to his master and he said, “Give me freedom!” The master said, “Bring yourself. If you are, I will make you free. But if you are not, then how can I make you free? You are already free. And freedom,” his master said, “is not your freedom. Really, freedom is freedom from ‘you’. So go and find out where this ‘I’ is, where you are, then come to me. This is the meditation. Go and meditate.”

So the disciple Rinzai goes and meditates for weeks, months, and then he comes. Then he says, “I am not the body. Only this much I have found.” So the master says, “This much you have become free. Go again. Try to find out.” Then he tries, meditates, and he finds that “I am not my mind, because I can observe my thoughts. So the observer is different from the observed – I am not my mind.” He comes and says, “I am not my mind.” So his master says, “Now you are three-fourths liberated. Now go again and find out who you are.”

So he was thinking, “I am not my body. I am not my mind.” He had read, studied, he was well informed, so he was thinking, “I am not my body, not my mind, so I must be my soul, my atma.” But he meditated, and then he found that there is no atman, no soul, because this atma is nothing but your mental information – just doctrines, words, philosophies.

So he came running one day and he said, “Now I am no more!” Then his master said, “Am I now to teach you the methods for freedom?” Rinzai said, “I am free because I am no more. There is no one to be in bondage. I am just a wide emptiness, a nothingness.”

Only nothingness can be free. If you are something, you will be in bondage. If you are, you will be in bondage. Only a void, a vacant space, can be free. Then you cannot bind it. Rinzai came running and said, “I am no more. Nowhere am I to be found.” This is freedom. And for the first time he touched his master’s feet – for the first time! Not actually, because he had touched them many times before also. But the master said, “For the first time you have touched my feet.”

Rinzai asked, “Why do you say for the first time? I have touched your feet many times.” The master said, “But you were there, so how could you touch my feet while you were already there? While you are there how can you touch my feet?” The “I” can never touch anybody’s feet. Even though it apparently looks like it touches somebody’s feet, it is touching its own feet, just in a round-about way. “You have touched my feet for the first time,” the master said, “because now you are no more. And this is also the last time,” the master said. “The first and the last.”

Surrender happens when you are not, so you cannot surrender. That is why surrender cannot be a technique. You cannot surrender – you are the hindrance. When you are not, surrender is there. So you and surrender cannot cohabit, there is no coexistence between you and surrender. Either you are or surrender is. So, find out where you are, who you are. This inquiry creates many, many surprising results.

Raman Maharshi used to say, “Inquire ‘Who am I?’” It was misunderstood. Even his nearest disciples have not understood the meaning of it. They think that this is an inquiry to find out really “Who am I?” It is not! if you go on inquiring “Who am I?” you are bound to come to the conclusion that you are not. This is not really an inquiry to find out “Who am I?” Really, this is an inquiry to dissolve.

I have given many this technique, to inquire within “Who am I?” Then a month or two months later, they will come to me and say, “I have still not found ‘Who am I?’ The question is still the same; there is no answer.”

So I tell them, “Continue. Someday the answer will come.” And they hope that the answer will come. There is going to be no answer. It is only that the question will dissolve. There is not going to be an answer, that “You are this.” Only the question will dissolve. There will be no one to ask even “Who am I?” And then you know.

When the “I” is not, the real “I” opens. When the ego is not, you are for the first time encountering your being. That being is void. Then you can surrender; then you have surrendered. You are surrender now. So there can be no techniques, or only negative techniques like this inquiry into “Who am I?”

How does surrender work? If you surrender, what happens? We will come to understand how methods work. We will go deep into methods, and we will come to know how they work. They have a scientific basis of working.

When you surrender you become a valley; when you are an ego you are like a peak. Ego means you are above everyone else, you are somebody. The others may recognize you, may not recognize you – that is another thing. You recognize that you are above everyone. You are like a peak; nothing can enter you.

When one surrenders, one becomes like a valley. One becomes depth, not height. Then the whole existence begins to pour into him from everywhere. He is just a vacuum, just a depth, an abyss, bottomless. The whole existence begins to pour from everywhere. You can say God runs from everywhere to him, enters him from every pore, fills him totally.

This surrender, this becoming a valley, an abyss, can be felt in many ways. There are minor surrenders; there are major surrenders. Even in minor surrenders you feel it. Surrendering to a master is a minor surrender, but you begin to feel it because the master begins to flow into you immediately. If you surrender to a master, suddenly you feel his energy flowing into you. If you cannot feel energy flowing into you, then know well you have not surrendered even in a minor way.

There are so many stories which have become meaningless for us because we do not know how they happened. Mahakashyap came to Buddha, and Buddha just touched his head with his hand, and the thing happened. And Mahakashyap began to dance. So, Ananda asked Buddha, “What has happened to him? And I have been for forty years with you! Is he mad? Or is he just fooling others? What has happened to him? And I have touched your feet thousands and thousands of times.”

Of course, to Ananda, this Mahakashyap will either look like he is mad or as if he is just deceiving. He was with Buddha for forty years, but there was a problem. He was his elder brother, Buddha’s elder brother; that was the problem. When Ananda came to Buddha forty years before, the first thing he said to Buddha was this: “I am your elder brother, and when you will initiate me, I will become your disciple. So allow me three things before I become your disciple, because then I cannot demand. One, I will always be with you. Give me this promise, that you will not say to me, ‘Go somewhere else.’ I will follow you.

“Secondly, I will sleep in the same room where you sleep. You cannot say to me, ‘Go out.’ I will be with you like your shadow. And thirdly, if I bring anyone at any time, even at midnight, you will have to answer him. You cannot say, ‘This is not the time.’ And give me these three promises while I am still your elder brother, because once I become your disciple I will have to follow you. You are still younger than me, so give me these promises.”

So Buddha promised, and this became the problem. For forty years Ananda was with Buddha, but he could never surrender, because this is not the spirit of surrender. Ananda asked many, many times, “When am I going to attain?” Buddha said, “Unless I die, you will not attain.” And Ananda could attain only when Buddha died.

What happened to this Mahakashyap suddenly? Is Buddha partial – partial to Mahakashyap? He is not! He is flowing, constantly flowing. But you have to be a valley, a womb, to receive him. If you are above him, how can you receive? That flowing energy cannot come to you, it will miss you. So bow down. Even in a minor surrender with a master, energy begins to flow. Suddenly, immediately, you become a vehicle of a great force.

There are thousands and thousands of stories… just by a touch, just by a look, someone became enlightened. They do not appear rational to us. How is this possible? This is possible! Even a look from the master into your eyes will change your total being, but it can change only if your eyes are just vacant, valley-like. If you can absorb the look of the master, immediately you will be different.

So these are minor surrenders that happen before you surrender totally. And these minor surrenders prepare you for the total surrender. Once you have known that through surrender you receive something unknown, unbelievable, unexpected, never even dreamed of, then you are ready for a major surrender. And that is the work of the master – to help you in minor surrenders so that you can gather courage for a major surrender, for a total surrender.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #2

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.

What is Tantric Sex? – Osho

What is tantric sex? After ‘monkey sex’ and after ‘love-bliss sex’, before the highest cosmic and religious sex in which no partner is needed, in which the cosmos is the partner, isn’t there tantric sex in which two partners are involved, a sex act which is a meditation based on certain techniques?

It is good that after meditating on death you will be meditating on Tantra and Tantra sex. Because sex is also a small death. And because of that small death in sex, there is so much release of joy in you. For a single moment you disappear, and that moment is the climax, the orgasm. In that single moment you don’t know who you are. In that single moment you are pure energy vibrating, pulsating. With no center to it, with no ego in it.

In that single moment of orgasmic space you lose all boundaries, separation. You become vast, huge. You are no more separate from the other. That’s why there is so much joy – although the moment is very small. And once it is gone you feel very frustrated, because it has been so short, it was so fleeting. And you start hankering again. And each time that moment comes you reach to a pinnacle and then you fall into a deep darkness, into the abyss.

So sex brings you joy, and sex brings you great misery too. It takes you to sunlit peaks and then drops you into the darkest valleys. After each sex act one feels frustrated. Something was happening, happening, and it happened…and you could not even catch hold of it and it was gone.

So sex remains the greatest fascination and the greatest frustration.

Because of these two things in the act of sex, there are two types of people. Those who become too much fascinated with the fascination, addicted with sex, they are the people who go on indulging in all kinds of sexualities, and their whole life is nothing but a search for more sex, better sex. And the other, who become addicted with the frustration of sex, they renounce the world, the woman, the man; they escape to the Himalayas or into the monasteries. But both have reacted to sex. Your worldly and your other-worldly, they are not different – they both are sexual, they have chosen one part of the sex act. They have chosen opposite parts, but they have chosen out of the sex act.

That’s why your so-called religions are so much against sex – they have chosen the frustration part. The indulgent and the renunciate are two aspects of the same coin. They are not different people, they are the same people, and both have chosen out of sex.

Tantra is a totally different attitude. It says: There is joy in sex and there is frustration in sex. Because the moment of orgasm is very small. That moment can become very deep, that moment can remain there for hours. That moment, once you know the art of remaining in it, can surround you twenty-four hours. Tantra transforms sex. Tantra is the true religion. It does not choose between the fascination and the frustration, it transcends both. It uses sex as a key. And it is a key – because all life comes through it, all flowers bloom through it and all birds sing through it. All that you see around you, the green and the red and the gold, all comes through sex and is sex energy. All the poetry and all the songs and all the music is rooted in sex-energy. All art, all creativity, is nothing but an expression of sex.

So Tantra sex has to be understood. A few things: The Tantric definition of sexuality is opposite to the modern definition. The modern mind regards sex as a need – like hunger for food – which incidentally provides sense-and ego-gratification. That’s how Freud thinks about sex, that it gives you ego-gratification, satisfaction, relaxation; it relieves tensions, it is a need. Tantra regards sex as a powerful instinctual return to our ultimate reality, one of the highest forms of meditation.

There you have to understand – the first thing to remember – Freud does not understand sex’s ultimate depth. Freud has only looked into the repressed sexuality of man. What Christianity has done in the West, the wrong, Freud was trying to put it right. But Christianity remains superficial and Freud remains superficial. Why? Because the cure cannot go deeper than the disease. The disease was superficial; the cure cannot be deeper than that.

Tantra does not define sex as a need – it is not. A man can live without sex, it is not a need. Not like food – you cannot survive without food. It is not like thirst – you cannot survive without water. But you can survive easily without sex – maybe you can survive longer. Sex is not a need like food or thirst or hunger. Sex has a definitely total dimension, a different dimension altogether. It is a way to contact the ultimate reality. It is an urge to move to the original source.

In ordinary sex it happens only for moments. Even that is rare, because there are very few orgasmic persons left in the world. People have become so much civilized that to be orgasmic seems impossible. A civilized person cannot be orgasmic because he cannot allow himself to be wild.

Only a wild person can be orgasmic, because orgasm is wild. The better you are civilized, the better you are cultured, sophisticated, educated, the less is the possibility for you to be orgasmic. Then sex is just a relief. It is like sneezing, nothing much. It is sheer wastage.

You accumulate energy and you don’t know what to do with your energy. And the energy becomes heavy on you, it has to be thrown out in some way or other. So you go on throwing the energy. But you have lost the language of orgasm. What is the language of orgasm? If you are really orgasmic you will groan and moan and shout and sing and pray, and a thousand and one things will happen when you are making love to your woman or to your man. It is going to be a mad thing.

And that is difficult in a civilized world. Mm? The whole neighborhood will know that now you are making love. And people will start phoning the police-station that there is danger, one person has gone orgasmic.

Yes, you will dance, you will sing, you will utter incoherent sounds, gibberish will come.

One never knows what will happen because you lose control. To be orgasmic means the capacity to lose control. The constant control is there, you are simply sitting on your energies controlling them – ‘This should be, this should not be. This is right, that is wrong.’ You are continuously doing that, inhibiting, repressing. Only go so far, beyond that is danger, only this much is allowed. How can you be orgasmic?

And if you are not orgasmic in other things, you cannot be orgasmic in sex. If in your anger you control, then you cannot be orgasmic in sex. If you can be orgasmic in anger, only then can you be orgasmic in sex. Man is a totality. If you cannot get into a rage, how can you get into love? Impossible.

Have you watched it? Knowingly, unknowingly, couples stumble upon the fact that if they want to make love it is a must that they should fight before they make love. So each evening, couples fight, become angry. Mm? – that becomes a little help. A pillow-fight is helpful. Your energies start moving, your juice starts flowing. And if you can be a little silly and stupid in anger then you can be silly and stupid in love too. Then who cares?

A natural man is orgasmic in all his emotions.

Somebody has asked a question: ‘If people become authentic as you say they should become, authentic and natural, and if they don’t smile because a smile is phony, and if they go on screaming and shouting in the streets, what will happen to the world?’

Many things will happen to the world. First, wars will become impossible. There will be no Vietnams and no Israels, because people will never accumulate so much anger in them that they have to kill, and kill millions. Many things will happen to the world if people are natural. Then they will not shout so much as you think they will shout. Right now they are allowed to shout they will shout – but for how long? If they are given complete freedom, shouts and abusing and condemnation and fights will start disappearing from the world. It is a vicious circle. It is as if you have been starving a person and you don’t allow him to go close to the fridge. And you say ‘If we allow him he will eat too much.’ And you have been starving him – and now you are afraid if you allow him any freedom he will eat too much, he will fall ill. So you don’t allow him to come to the fridge. He has to live by his quota – whatsoever you give, he has to live on.

Now he fantasizes, he dreams: What to do? How to reach to the fridge? How to eat more? His whole imagination becomes focused on food, he dreams of food.

A famous Sufi story says: Three persons were travelling. They purchased a Sufi sweet, halvah. But they had not enough money and the halvah was very costly. It was not enough for three, so there was great debate – who should eat it? They decided ‘We should do one thing: we all should sleep, and in the morning whosoever has dreamt the best dream, he will be the person to eat it all.’ Agreed, they fell asleep.

Early morning, they related their dreams. One said, he was a Christian, he said ‘I dreamt of Jesus. And Jesus said “Come to Heaven, I have prepared the place for you.” And he was calling me, inviting me. It was such a beautiful dream, I have never dreamt such a thing. And Jesus was so radiant, and I feel so good that I have been accepted by Jesus.’

The second was a Hindu. He said ‘This is nothing. I dreamt I have become Krishna. And thousands of gopis are dancing around me, beautiful damsels, and I am playing on the flute. It was such a beautiful dream.’

And the third was a Mohammedan Sufi. And they asked ‘What about you?’ He said ‘Mohammed appeared and said “You fool! What are you doing here? Go and eat the halvah!” So I have eaten it! Because how can you reject when Mohammed commands?

If you are hungry, if you are kept starving, then the fear arises that if you are left loose in the streets you may enter into a restaurant, kill the owner, or do something. But if you are well fed then nobody does anything like that. This is what has happened – for thousands of years you have been repressed, you have been made more and more phony. Now the fear arises. The questioner is right – the fear arises, if people become authentic and start screaming and shouting and doing things the way they always wanted to do and were never allowed to do, the world will go mad

Yes, for a few years the world will go mad. But that madness will be therapeutic, it will help immensely. After that nobody will ever go mad. Neurosis will disappear, psychosis will disappear wars will disappear, politicians will become meaningless. Nations and the militaries and armies will become irrelevant – they will not be needed. That’s why the politician and the priest are so much in favor of repressing people, because they depend on these repressions. Wars will not be there.

Generals won’t like it, army people won’t like it, if there is no Vietnam then their whole purpose is lost. If there are no nations then what is the point of having prime ministers and presidents? They are irrelevant.

Government becomes irrelevant if people are natural. Less and less government will be needed. So, so many people have investments. And their fear looks right, logical, because for so many centuries man has been repressed that they are afraid that things may explode. Yes, for a few years, for one generation at least, there will be great explosion. Then things will disappear.

Bertrand Russell has written that when he was a child, even legs of chairs were covered with cloth. Legs, because they look sexual. And he says ‘I had not seen any legs of a woman.’ The garments had to be so long that you could not see. And Bertrand Russell says in those days people used to fantasize about legs, dream about legs. Even a dream about a leg was enough of an excitement, an ecstasy. Now nobody bothers about the legs. Once you have seen men and women naked you stop worrying about, dreaming about, their nakedness. Dreams change.

The world needs to be more natural. Then there will be less anxiety, less fear, less worry. But for a generation there will be great explosion – after that, things will settle. We have to take that risk, only that risk can save humanity. Otherwise everybody is going mad.

The Tantra attitude about sex is that sex is not a need. It is a cosmic experience, it is an experience of meditation. It is an instinctual return to our ultimate reality, one of the highest forms of meditation.

In fifteen minutes to an hour or more of uninterrupted coitus, Tantra seeks a complete loss of the ego. Just see the difference. Freud says it is a gratification for the ego. And that’s how it has become, and Freud is not wrong. If you see the modern man, he is right.

People go on making love just to prove that they are males or females, or what charming people they are, beautiful people they are. People go on finding new women, new men, just to prove that ‘I am still attractive.’ My observation of people is that they don’t fall in love. Their joy is not love, their joy is conquest. Once they have achieved a woman they are no more interested in her. It is not love.

Now they are seeking new pasture, now they want a new woman. Now they want to prove again that they are still young, looked at, they still have charisma, magnetism. And the more women they can make love with, the more their ego is satisfied. This is not love. And Freud is right that sex gives ego-gratification.

But look at Tantra. Tantra has a totally different idea. Tantra says: The appeal of sex is because it gives you a moment of egolessness, timelessness, meditation. Because of ego-gratification, sex has become very, very superficial, it only scratches the skin. It does not go deep, it has no depth. So many people are worried about premature ejaculation. The reason? They don’t love. If they love, then naturally they can make love for longer periods – the more you are in love, the longer the period will be. For hours you can be in love, because there is no hurry, the ego is not controlling.

In a Tantra coitus you can remain for hours. It is a kind of melting with the woman or with the man, it is a kind of relaxation into each other’s being. And it is meditative, because there is no ego, no thought stirs. And time stops. This is a glimpse of God. Tantra is the natural way to God, the normal way to God. The object is to become so completely instinctual, so mindless, that we merge with ultimate nature – that the woman disappears and becomes a door for the ultimate; the man disappears and becomes a door for the ultimate.

This is the Tantra definition of our sexuality: The return to absolute innocence, absolute oneness.

The greatest sexual thrill of all is no search for thrills, but a silent waiting, utterly relaxed, utterly mindless. One is conscious, conscious only of being conscious. One is consciousness. One is contented, but there is no content to it. And then there is great beauty, great benediction.

The questioner asks: What is tantric sex… A sex which is a meditation based on certain techniques?

If you are too much technique-oriented you will miss the mystery of Tantra. That is pseudo Tantra that is based on techniques. Because if techniques are there, ego will be there, controlling. Then you will be DOING it. And doing is the problem, doing brings the doer. Tantra has to be a non-doing; it cannot be technical. You can learn techniques – you can learn certain breathing so that the coitus can become longer. If you breathe very, very slowly, if you breathe without any hurry, then the coitus will become longer. But you are controlling. It will not be wild and it will not be innocent. And it will not be meditation either. It will be mind – how can it be meditation? The mind will be controlling there. You cannot even breathe fast, you have to keep your breathing slow – if the breathing is slow then ejaculation will take a longer time, because for ejaculation to happen the breathing has to be fast and chaotic. Now, this is technique but not Tantra.

Real Tantra is not technique but love. It is not technique but prayer. Is not head-oriented but a relaxation into the heart. Please remember it. Many books have been written on Tantra, they all talk about technique. But the real Tantra has nothing to do with technique. The real Tantra cannot be written about; the real Tantra has to be imbibed. How to imbibe real Tantra? You will have to transform your whole approach.

Pray with your woman, sing with your woman, play with your woman, dance with your woman, with no idea of sex. Don’t go on thinking ‘When are we going to bed?’ Forget about it. Do something else, and get lost into it. And some day love will arise out of that being lost. Suddenly you will see that you are making love and you are not making it. It is happening, you are possessed by it. Then you have your first Tantra experience – possessed by something bigger than you. You were dancing or you were singing together or you were chanting together or you were praying together or meditating together, and suddenly you find you both have moved into a new space. And when you have started making love you don’t know, you don’t remember either. Then you are being possessed by Tantra energy. And then for the first time you will see a non-technical experience.

When you are making love don’t control. Go into un-control, go into chaos. It will be fearful, frightening, because it will be a kind of death. And the mind will say ‘Control!’ And the mind will say ‘Jump in and keep control, otherwise you will be lost in the abyss of it.’ Don’t listen to the mind, get lost. Abandon yourself utterly. And without any technique you will come to see a timeless experience. There will be no two in it: oneness. A consciousness will be there, a lucid passive consciousness will be there, you will know what is happening, because you will be fully aware. But you will not be there. Awareness will be there.

You have to imbibe the Tantra spirit – it is not a technique to be learned.

-Osho

From This Very Body the Buddha, Discourse #8

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

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

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