Meditation – Sat Sangha Salon

By the Merit of a Single Sitting – Osho

By the merit of a single sitting, he destroys innumerable 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, an abundant life.

-Osho

From This Very Body the Buddha, Discourse #1

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Toward the Silence of the Innermost Center – Osho

Nischalatwam pradakshinam.

Stillness is pradakshina, the movement around That for worship.

Silence is meditation and silence is basic for any religious experience. What is silence? You can create it, you can cultivate it, you can force it, but then it is just superficial, false, pseudo. You can practice it, and you will begin to feel and experience it – but your practice makes it auto-hypnotic. It is not the real silence. Real silence comes only when your mind dissolves: not through any effort, but through understanding; not through any practice, but through an inner awareness.

We are filled with sounds, outside and inside. In the outside world it is impossible to create a situation which is silent. Even when we move to a deep forest, there is no silence – only new sounds, natural sounds. At midnight everything stops, but it is not silence – only new sounds, sounds you are not acquainted with. They are more harmonious, of course, more musical, but they are still sounds, not silence.

Silence is impossible in the outside world. [. . . .]

The real inside is absolutely silent. If you allow me, I will say that the absolute point of silence is the inside. Sound is outside, silence is inside. “Silence” and “inside” are synonymous. If you move out, then you move in sound. If you move in, then you move in silence. You must reach a point where no-sound is, or as the Zen Masters say, the soundless sound. The Hindu yogis have always called it anahat nada; the uncreated sound of silence.

But one need not use these paradoxical words: it will be easy to understand with simple words.

Outside is sound, inside there is silence, soundlessness. [. . . .]

If you are thinking in terms of objective silence, there is no possibility of silence. If you are thinking of silence as being somewhere other than your inner center, then there is no possibility of it. But you can create a pseudo silence very easily. You can cultivate it; you can practice it.

For example, you can use any mantra. Constant repetition will give you a pseudo-feeling of silence, a false feeling of silence. Constant repetition of a mantra hypnotizes you. You begin to feel dull, your awareness is lost, you become more and more sleepy. In that sleepiness you may feel that you have become silent, but it is not silence. Silence means that the mind is dissolved through understanding. The more you understand your mind, the more you become aware of its mechanism and working, and the more you are disidentified with your mind.

It is identification which creates inner noise. Anger is there in the mind: you are identified with it; you do not see it as an object. The anger is there somewhere outside you, but you begin to feel angry, you begin to become one with it. Then you miss your inner center, you have moved. Many thoughts are flowing in the mind continuously, the thought process is on, and you are identified with each and every thought. Any thought is yours; you become one with it. Then you have moved.

Not only with thought do you become one, but with things still further from your center. Your house is not only your house: you have become your house. Your possessions are not just your possessions: you are identified with them. When your car is damaged, your innerness is also damaged. When your house is on fire, you are also on fire. If all of your possessions are just taken away, you will die.

We are identified with our possessions, we are identified with our thoughts, we are identified with our emotions, we are identified with everything except ourselves. We are identified with everything except with the innermost center. Because of this identification, noise is created, conflict, a continuous anguish, tension.

It is bound to be there because you are not your house. There is a gap and you have forgotten the gap. You are not your wife; you are not your husband. There is a gap: you have forgotten the gap. You are not your thoughts, your anger or your love or your hatred. There is a gap. When you begin to feel this gap, you are always outside it, a witness, not involved in it. With anything in which you are not involved, you are outside it. [. . . .]

There is a gap. And the moment your focus of consciousness is transferred from object to sounds, to the soundless center of awareness, you are in silence. So I would like to say that you are silence, and everything else except you is sound. If you are identified with anything, then you will never attain this soundlessness.

This sutra says: “Silence, stillness, is pradakshina, the movement around That for worship.” You go to a temple and then you move around the altar of the deity seven times. This is a ritual of worship, but every ritual is symbolic. Why seven rounds? Man has seven bodies, and with each body there are identifications. So when someone moves in, he has to leave seven bodies and the identification with each body. There are seven rounds; when these seven rounds are complete, you are in the center.

The altar in the temple is not something outside you. You are the temple, and the altar is your inner center. If the mind moves around the center and comes nearer and nearer and nearer and, ultimately, is established in the center, this is pradakshina. And when you happen to be at your center, everything is silent. This silence is achieved through understanding – understanding of your anger, your passion, your greed, your sex, everything. It is an understanding of your mind. But we are identified with our minds; we think we are our minds. That is the only problem: how to be detached from our own minds, how to be divorced, so to speak, from our own minds.. . . .]

The mind is the problem, and the mind is always looking outside, never in. A divorce is needed not with a particular mind, not with this or that mind, but with mind itself. With “minding” itself a divorce is needed, and only then do you enter silence.

So what is to be done? You can do two things: one is to transform mind itself. Another, which is very ordinary, and which is done everywhere, is not to try to change this mind, but to use some technique to drug this mind. Then the mind remains as it is; no transformation is needed. A mantra is given to you, a method, a certain technique: you do it with this very mind.

You are capable of dulling it and drugging it. Then it will be less active on the surface, but it will be more active in the deeper realms. It may become absolutely inactive on the surface, and you may be befooled by it, but the activity will continue inside. Use a mantra: go on repeating Rama-Rama or Krishna – any name – and on the surface the mind will become silent. But inside you will feel the activity.

Just below the surface of the mind much activity is going on. Thinking continues in subdued terms, in subdued tones. Everything continues; it just goes underground. This is very easy. That is why mantra yoga is a very prevalent thing. It has appeal. Mahesh Yogi’s transcendental meditation is just this sort of self-deception. It is just a trick; you can play it. It will help in the beginning, and for a few days you will feel very much edified, elevated. Then everything stops. A plateau is reached. When the surface has become a little bit silent, then you cannot do this technique; you cannot do anything with it. And then, by and by, the subdued notes will become again clear.

This is simple autohypnosis. Even if you think, “I am silent, I am silent, I am getting more silent every day,” you will begin to feel a certain silence. But that feeling is just thought-created. Stop thinking and it will evaporate. This is Coué’s method: just go on thinking repeatedly, continuously, that you are silent, that you are getting more and more silent day by day. Go on continuously repeating this. Constant repetition will befool you. You will begin to think, “Of course, now I am silent.” This is self-deception, and it leads nowhere. You remain the same; there is no transformation.

This sutra is not concerned with such stillnesses. This sutra is concerned with the authentic silence which comes not through techniques but through understanding. And what do I mean by understanding? Do not fight with the mind; try to understand it. Anger is there: do not be angry against anger, do not fight anger. Rather, try to understand what anger is: what this energy is, why it comes, what the cause of it is, what the origin of it is, and where the source is. Meditate upon anger, and the more you become aware of it, the less and less anger will come to you. And when there is no anger, you are thrown into your inner silence.

Sex is there: do not fight it; try to understand it. But we are fighting with ourselves. Either we are identified with the mind, or we are fighting with the mind. In both the cases we are the losers. If you are identified, then you will indulge in anger, in sex, in greed, in jealousy. If you are fighting, then you will create anti-attitudes. Then you will create inner divisions. Then you will create inner polarities. And you will be divided – no one else, because the anger is your anger. Now if you fight it, you will have double anger – anger plus this angriness against anger – and you will be divided. You can go on fighting, but this fight is just absurd.

It is as if I am trying to fight my right hand with my left hand. I can go on fighting. Sometimes my right hand will win, sometimes my left hand will win – but there is no victory. You can play the game, but there is neither defeat nor victory . . . because you are fighting from both the sides. No victory is possible because there is no one except you. You are playing with yourself, dividing yourself. This fight, this inner fight, is the curse of all religious persons, because the moment they become aware of the hell their minds have created, they begin to fight it. But through fight, you will never move anywhere.

Many reasons are there. When you fight with your mind, you have to remain with it, and when you fight with your mind, it shows ignorance. The mind is there only because you have a deep cooperation with it. If the cooperation is withdrawn, the mind dissolves. Then there is no need to fight. The mind is not your enemy. It is just the accumulation of your own experiences. It is your mind because you have accumulated it. And you cannot fight with your experiences. If you do, then the greater possibility is this – that your experiences may win. They are more weighty than you.

This happens every day. If you fight with your mind, your mind wins in the end – not ultimately, but it wins and you have to yield. Real, authentic stillness is not achieved through fight. Fight is suppressive, repressive. And whatsoever is repressed has to be repressed again and again, and whatsoever is repressed will try to rebel against you. You will become a madhouse – fighting with yourself, talking with yourself, taking revenge upon yourself, yielding to yourself, being defeated by yourself. You will become a madhouse!

Do not be in a fight with the mind. This will create such noise that even ordinary persons are not so filled with inner noise as religious persons are. Ordinary persons are not even bothered like this. They go on, they take it easy. They know it is a hell, but they accept what is. A religious person knows the mind is a hell, so he denies it, fights with it, and then a double hell is created.

You cannot create heaven by fighting hell. If you want to transcend, fight is not the way. Awareness, knowing what this mind is, is the way. So what is to be done? Be aware of suppressive methods. Only one thing is essential – whatsoever you are doing, do it with full awareness. If you are angry, then be angry with awareness.

Gurdjieff used to create situations for his disciples. He would just create situations! You would have just come into the room, and Gurdjieff would create a situation in which you were insulted. Someone would say something very abusive about you, someone else would say something else that is abusive, and you would begin to get angry. The whole group would help you to get angry, and you would be unaware of what was happening. And Gurdjieff would push you into more and more anger, and then suddenly you would burst, you would explode, you would become mad.

And then Gurdjieff would say, “Now be angry with full awareness. Do not go back, do not fall back from the anger. Just be angry.” And it is easy to fall back from it. Then he would say, “Be alert inside and see what is happening in you. Close your eyes and see what is happening. From where are these clouds of anger coming? From where is this smoke coming? Find the inner fire inside from where this smoke is coming.”

Gurdjieff was always creating situations. He was of the opinion that if we want a more silent world, we must teach our children how to be angry, how to be jealous, how to be filled with hate, how to be violent. We must teach them! We are doing quite the opposite. We say, “Do not be angry!” No one tells what anger is. No one teaches that if you are going to be angry, then be angry in a tactful way, then be angry efficiently, then be a master of anger. No one is teaching this! Everyone is against anger, and everyone is saying, “Do not be angry!” The child is even unaware of what anger is, but we tell him, “Don’t be angry,” and we go on laying down commandments: “Don’t do this, don’t do that.”

A child was asked what his name was, and he said, “‘Don’t,’ because whenever I do anything, either my mother or my father shouts, ‘Don’t!’ So I think this is my name. I am always called by Don’t.”

This creates a fighting attitude. Without knowledge you are against certain things. And if you are ignorant, you cannot win because knowledge is power. Not only scientifically in the outside world, but inwardly also knowledge is power.

There is electricity in the clouds. It has always been there, but we were ignorant in the past. The electricity in the clouds would only create fear in us and nothing else. Now we know about it. Now the electricity has become our slave, so there is no fear. Otherwise, the Vedas say that when God is angry with you, he will send thunder, he will send storms, lightning. When he is angry this will happen with you. It was “God’s anger,” they said. Now we have channelized it. Now it is no more God’s anger; it is no more at all related with God. We are manipulating it. Thus, knowledge becomes power.

Inner anger is just like electricity, like lightning. Previously the lightning in the clouds was “God’s anger”; then we came to know about it. Knowledge became power, and now there is no “God’s anger” in the clouds. Your anger is again an inner electricity. The moment you know about it, there will be no anger inside you. And then you can channelize your anger: it will become your servant.

A person who has no real anger will really be impotent. Anger is energy. If you do not know it, it becomes suicidal. If you know about it, you can transform the energy. You can use it. Then it is just your slave. And the same for everything. Your thoughts, they are energy; they can be used. If you become silent, you become the master of your thoughts. At present you have thoughts but no thinking – many thoughts and no thinking. When you have no thoughts, you have become the master of your process of thinking; you can think for the first time. Thinking is energy, but then you are the master.

With the discovery of the inner still point, you become the master. Without this discovery, you will remain a slave to your instincts, to anything. Knowledge will lead you in, so make yourself a laboratory. You are a universe. Find out what your energies are – they are not your enemies – what are your energies?

Choose your chief characteristic. Remember this: choose the chief characteristic. Find out whether anger is your chief characteristic or sex or greed or jealousy or hate. What is your chief characteristic? Find out first, because if you go on without knowing the chief characteristic, it will be a difficult process to go in – because the chief characteristic has your energy in it. It is the central thing; everything else is just secondary to it, subsidiary to it.

If your anger is the chief characteristic, then all else will be just a support to it. Find the center of your energies, and then begin to be aware of it. Then forget everything else. If greed is your chief characteristic, then be aware of greed and forget everything else. When greed is solved, everything else will be solved. And remember this: do not imitate anyone else because another’s chief characteristic may be a different thing.

Because of this imitative tendency, we create unnecessary problems. For example, Buddha had one thing to transform. Mahavir had another thing, Jesus something else. If you blindly follow Jesus, then you will begin to fight with the chief characteristic of Jesus rather than with your own, and that will misguide you. If you blindly follow Buddha, then again you are misguided. Understand Buddha, understand Jesus, but find your own disease and concentrate your awareness on that particular disease. If the main disease is solved, minor diseases will dissolve by themselves.

We go on fighting with minor diseases. Then you can waste lives together. You change one minor disease, and another minor disease will be created, because the source of energy, the central source of your disease, remains intact. [. . . .]

So you can go on cutting the leaves of a tree, and the tree will again put out new leaves. You cut one and the tree will supply two, and the tree will be greener for your effort, more green. You cannot cut leaves; you can only cut roots. Leaves and roots are different things. When I say, “the chief characteristic,” I mean the root. When I say, “minor problems,” I mean leaves. And the problem becomes more difficult to solve because leaves are apparent and roots are underground. They are the source of all the leaves. You cut the whole tree, and a new tree will come out because the roots are intact. You cut the roots, and the tree will disappear automatically. There is no need to be bothered with the tree.

But the roots are underground; your chief characteristic will always be found underground. So whatsoever you say is your problem is never the case. It can be taken for granted that that is not the case. Rather, quite the opposite may be the case, because we go on hiding our inner weaknesses. And just to distract the mind, just to forget the real problems, we create minor problems. [. . . .]

In your inner world, you go on avoiding problems which you cannot solve. You try to forget problems which you cannot solve; you begin to focus your mind on problems which you can solve. Because of that, your chief diseases go underground. Ultimately, you are not even aware of them, and you go on fighting with phony problems that are not real problems. These phony problems can take much energy and dissipate your energies, destroy them, and you remain the same because you go on fighting with the leaves.

So the first thing toward inner stillness is to find out what the root of your problems, of your conflicts, of your tension, is – what the root is! Do not think about how to solve it, because if you think of solving you will be afraid. Do not think of solving it. First, there must be a simple finding out of what the chief characteristic of the mind is, what the center of the mind is. No question about solving it, no idea about changing it, just take a simple inventory to find out what the chief problem of your mind is.

Do not go on escaping from the chief characteristic and do not create phony problems. It will not help. Even if you solve them, it will not help. Once you know the chief characteristic of your mind, just be aware of it: how it works, how it creates inner nets, how it goes on working inside and influencing your whole life. Just be aware. Still do not think about how to change it, because the moment you begin to think about how to change it you miss the opportunity of being aware.

Anger is there, greed is there, sex is there: do not think of changing them, do not think of transcending them. They are there: be aware. Transcendence is not a result; it is a consequence. Remember this difference. The difference is subtle. Transcendence is not a result: it is a consequence! What do I mean? You cannot think about transcendence; you cannot think how to go beyond mind. By thinking you will never go. If I say, “Be aware,” I do not mean that by awareness you can go beyond mind. [. . . .]

So if I say that by awareness you will transcend, do not think that awareness is a method and that because you want to transcend then you will transcend. Do not think, “Of course, if awareness is the method, then I am going to practice it; through it I will transcend.” Then you will never transcend. If awareness is attained, transcendence happens. It is a consequence; it comes. If awareness is there, transcendence will come. Then you will go beyond your mind; you will reach the inner center of stillness. But you cannot desire it.

That is what I mean when I say that it is not a result. A result can be desired, but a consequence follows. It cannot be desired! A result can be manipulated, planned, but a consequence cannot be manipulated, cannot be planned. If you are really aware, you will transcend. Awareness is not a method for transcendence. Awareness is transcendence. This constant awareness of your mind dissolves your greed, your anger, your sex, your hate, your jealousy, by and by. They dissolve automatically. There is no effort to dissolve them, not even any intention to dissolve them, not any longing to dissolve them. They are there, so rather than an intention to dissolve them, acceptance is more helpful.

Accept your anger. It is there: accept it and be aware of it. These are two things: acceptance and awareness. And you can be aware only if you accept totally. If you do not accept me, you cannot look at my face. If you do not accept me, you will try to avoid me in subtle ways. Even if I am present in the room, you will look in some other direction, you will think of something else. If you do not accept me, if you reject me, your whole mind will try to avoid me. If you reject anger, you cannot be aware. You cannot encounter it face to face. And when anger is encountered face to face, it dissolves. When sex is encountered face to face, the energy is released into a different dimension. Encounter your mind and accept it. [. . . .]

This is the secret. If a madman can accept his madness totally, madness will disappear. With whatsoever you can accept totally, a new phenomenon happens inside. Through acceptance, conflict is dissolved, and the energy that was being dissipated in conflict is not dissipated now. You become stronger. With this strength and awareness, you go higher than your mind.

So you should have acceptance of the mind and awareness of the mind – and a third thing: you should move in this world, live in this world, not from the periphery, but from the center.

Someone abuses you; he is speaking against your name. The man who lives from the periphery will think, “He is saying something against me.” The man who lives from the center will think, “He is speaking against the name, and I am not the name. I was born without any name. The name is just a label on the periphery, so why become disturbed? He is saying something not against me, but against the name.”

If you are identified with the name, then you become disturbed. If you can feel the gap between the name and you, between the periphery and you, then the periphery is hurt, but the hurt never reaches to the center.

One Hindu sannyasin, Swami Ramateertha, was in America. Someone abused him, but he came laughing and told his disciples, “Someone was abusing Rama very much. Rama was in great difficulty. He was being abused, and he was in great difficulty.”

So the disciples asked, “About whom are you talking? Rama is your name.”

Ramateertha said, “It is, of course, my name – but not me. They do not know me at all. How can they abuse me? They know only my name.”

Even if your action is abused, it is not you – only the action. If you can maintain a gap – and that is not difficult with awareness; it is the most easy thing – then the periphery is touched, but the center remains untouched. If the center remains untouched, sooner or later you are bound to discover the point of deep stillness which is not only your point, but the point, the central point, of the whole Existence.

I was reading a story just this morning. It is one of the most beautiful stories. One young seeker, after a long and arduous journey, reached the hut of his Master, the Master of his choice. It was evening, and the Master was just sweeping fallen leaves. The seeker greeted the Master, but the Master remained silent. He asked many questions, but there were no replies. He tried in every way to get the attention of the Master, but the Master was there as if he were alone. He went on sweeping the fallen leaves.

Seeing no possibility of getting the attention of the Master, the disciple decided to make a hut in the same forest and to live there. He lived there for years. After a time, the past dropped, because in order for it to continue one has to go on creating it daily. You have to create your past again and again daily in order to continue it. But in the forest everything was silent. No man was there; only the Master was there who was just like no man. There was no communication. He would not even reply to a greeting; he would not even look at the disciple. His eyes were just vacant, an emptiness.

So after a time, the past dissolved. The disciple continued to be there. Thoughts were there; then by and by they slowed down because you have to feed them daily for them to continue. If you do not feed them, they cannot continue forever. With nothing to do, he would relax, sit silently, sweep the fallen leaves. One day, after many years, he was sweeping the fallen leaves and he became Enlightened. He stopped everything, and he ran to the master’s hut and went in. The Master was sweeping fallen leaves. The disciple said, “Thank you, sir!”

Of course, the Master never replied. But this “thank you” is beautiful. He went to the Master and said, “Thank you, sir.” Only because of this Master not replying to him – not giving any intellectual answers, not even looking at him, remaining so silent – only because of this did he learn something from the Master. He learned this silence; he learned this living in the center without being bothered by the periphery.

Someone is greedy: this is a peripheral matter; let him be greedy. Someone is asking something: this is a peripheral matter; let him ask. The Master remained undisturbed. He went on sweeping his dead leaves. He didn’t say anything, but he showed a way. He did not say anything, but he answered. He was the answer! Such a silence the disciple had never before known! Such an absent presence he had never witnessed! It was as if the man was not there, as if the man was a nothingness, not a man; a nobodiness, not a man.

Without saying anything, the Master had said much. Rather, he showed much, and the disciple followed. It was only one lesson, but a very secret one: to remain in the center and not be bothered by the periphery. For years together, the disciple tried to remain in the center not being bothered by the periphery. One day, while sweeping the fallen dead leaves, he was Awakened. Years had passed, and now there was such gratefulness! He stopped everything, ran to the Master and said, “Thank you, sir!” Just by following a hidden answer, it happened.

But it depends on you. Someone else in his place might have felt humiliated, insulted, might have felt that this man is mad, might have got angry. Then he would have missed a great opportunity. But he was not negative. He took it very positively. He felt the meaning of it, he tried to live it, and the thing happened. It was a consequence; it was not a result. He could have imitated, but this was not imitation. He never came again. He was in the same forest, but he never came again until the happening. He came only twice: first he came to greet the Master, and then he came to thank him.

What was he doing for all these years? It was a simple lesson. There was only one secret, but it was the most basic one. He tried not to be bothered by the periphery. He accepted himself. Not bothering with the periphery, not being bothered by the periphery, he remained aware. He was so aware, really, that it was as if these twenty years were not there. And when the thing happened, when the happening was there, he ran as if nothing had happened within these twenty years. Twenty years before, the Master had shown him a way, but it was as if these twenty years were not there. He reached the Master to thank him – as if he had shown him the way just a moment before.

If silence is there, time disappears. Time is a peripheral matter. If silence is there, you become grateful to everything – to the sky, to the earth, to the sun, to the moon, to everything. If silence is there, any moment the old world disappears, the old you is no more there. The old man is dead, and a new life, a new energy, is born.

This sutra says that this is pradakshina. If you can enter into the center of your Being, this is stillness – where there is no sound. Only then have you entered the temple, worshipped the deity, encircled, done the ritual. In a temple, we can go on continuously doing the ritual without ever being aware of what this ritual means. Every ritual is a secret key. The ritual in itself is childish. If you do not know that a key is a key, you can play with it. But then you might as well throw it, since in the end you will come to realize that this is meaningless – because you do not know the lock and you do not know the key or that something can be opened by it. These are secret languages.

Rituals are secret languages. Through them something has been communicated. Books can be destroyed because languages become dead; the meaning of words goes on changing. Because of this, whenever there has been an Enlightened One he has created certain rituals. They are more permanent languages. When the scriptures disappear, when religions become dead, when old languages cannot be understood or can be misinterpreted, the rituals continue.

Sometimes a whole religion disappears, but the rituals go on. They become transplanted into new religions. They enter new religions without anyone being aware of what is happening. Rituals are a permanent language, and whenever one goes deep in them the secrets are discovered. This Upanishad is basically concerned with the ritual of worship, and every act is meaningful.

In itself it looks childish. It is stupid to go into a temple and make rounds around the altar or around the image of the deity. It looks stupid! What are you doing? In itself it is stupid because we have forgotten that the key is a key. Its meaning is in knowing the lock; its meaning is in opening the lock. These seven rounds around the altar are concerned with the seven bodies, and the altar is concerned with the innermost center.

Move around your center, go on moving inwards, and a moment comes when every movement stops. Then there is no sound; you have entered silence. This silence is Divine, this silence is bliss, this silence is the aim of all religions, and this silence is the purpose of all life. And unless you attain this silence, whatsoever you may attain is useless, meaningless; even if you can attain the whole world, it is of no use.

But if you attain this inner silence, this center, and you lose the whole world, even then it is worth attaining. No bargain is bad – even if everything is staked, sacrificed. When you achieve the inner silence, you know that whatsoever you have paid for it was nothing. What you receive is invaluable; what you have lost for it was just rubbish.

But the rubbish is wealth to us, the rubbish is very valuable to us. And I will repeat again: if you think that you can purchase with this rubbish, then you will never be able to get to the center. The center cannot be a result. If you throw this rubbish, you attain to it – that is a consequence.

Stillness is pradakshina, the movement around That for worship – around That, the inner center or the innermost center. “This” is the periphery, “That” is the center. So go on leaving “This” and go on moving toward “That.” This is all that sadhana consists of; this is the path.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.2 #7

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The Inner Alchemy – Osho

Paripoorn chandra amrit rasaiki karanam naivedyam.

Accumulation of the nectar of the inner full moon is naivedya, the food offering.

You must have heard about the Taoist concept of yin and yang – the concept of polar opposites into one reality. Reality exists through polar opposites – through the positive and the negative, through the male and the female, through yin and yang.

Reality is a dialectical process. And when I say “dialectical process,” I mean it is not a simple process, it is very complex. A simple process means one element working; a dialectical process means two polar opposites working in one direction. And though they appear as opposites, they create a symphony – they create a musical harmony. And that harmony is reality.

Man and woman, they mean humanity. Man alone is not humanity, nor is woman alone humanity. Humanity – the music, the synthesis we call humanity – is a dialectical phenomenon. Man and woman both work to create humanity, they both help to create humanity. And the way of their creating it is dialectical. They exist as polar opposites, and the inner tension between the two creates the energy for movement, for a process of further growth.

It is the same on every plane. If we go deep down with the physicist to the atom’s inner structure, then again, we find two polar opposites working there: the negative electricity and the positive electricity. Because of these two polar opposites, matter is created. If there were only positive electricity, the world would disappear immediately. If there were only negative electricity, there would be nothing. But negative electricity and positive electricity create an inner tension, and because of that inner tension matter exists.

The same is the case with the inner being of man also. This sutra is concerned with that. We discussed how awareness creates an inner sun. But this sutra talks about the creation of an inner moon. The sun is symbolic of the inner positivity and the moon is symbolic of the inner negativity. The sun is the inner male and the moon is the inner female. These words are symbolic, and for Indian yoga, particularly, they are very meaningful. By “sun” the outer sun is not what is meant, nor by “moon” the outer moon. These two words “sun” and “moon” are used for the inner universe.

Indian yoga divides man into two parts: the sun part and the moon part. Even one breath is known as the sun breath and another breath is known as the moon breath. And, really, this is one of the deepest findings. If you stop the moon breath and just breathe from the sun breath, your body will become hot. And such a great heat can be created, simply by using only one kind of breath, that it seems inconceivable in physiological terms. Among Tibetans there exists a heat yoga in which breathing is done only through this sun breath, not using the moon breath at all.

Ordinarily the breath is continuously changing, but Western medical science has not yet taken note of it. Breathing is not a simple process. It is a dialectical process. You are changing your nostrils within each hour. Between forty and sixty minutes, approximately, your nostrils change, and you begin to take your breath from the other nostril; then again it changes. When you need more heat in the body – for example, if suddenly you become angry – your sun breath starts.

Yoga says that when you are angry, if you use your moon breath and stop the sun breath, you cannot be angry at all, because the moon breath creates a deep coolness inside. The whole body is divided between the sun and the moon, and the mind is also divided between the sun and the moon.

So look at man not as one, because nothing can exist as just one. Everything exists through duality. You are divided into two: you have a negative part and you have a positive part. The positive is known as the sun in Indian symbology and the negative as moon. The negative is cool, silent, still. The positive is hot, vibrant with energy, active. The sun is the active part in you and the moon the inactive part, and if the active and the inactive both come to a deep equilibrium you are suddenly enlightened. If one is more emphatic, you have an imbalance, but if both are of equal force, then they balance each other, negate each other, and the moment both are of equal force, your inner balance is regained, and you reach to a different reality – the reality of the non-dual. That one nondual reality can be felt only when both of these dualities in you are balanced. Then you transcend them.

In the world we exist as duality. Beyond the world we exist as non-duality, as one. Think of yourself as a triangle; two angles exist in the world and the third angle beyond the world. Two angles belong to this world and one angle belongs to that world – the world of the Brahman. But if these two are in an imbalance, you cannot go beyond them. You go beyond them only when they regain balance. This balancing is nirvana, this balancing is moksha, this balancing is the centering. Awareness works to balance this duality. And the moment this duality is balanced, you cannot be reborn again – you disappear from the world.

You can be born again and again only if there is an imbalance. If the balance comes to a totality, if the balance becomes total, it is impossible to be born again. You disappear from the world; the body cannot exist anymore. Then you cannot re-enter a body again. So first we will try to understand what this inner sun is and what this inner moon is, and how they are balanced.

This sutra says, “Accumulation of the nectar of the inner full moon is naivedya, the food offering.” You need a full moon in you to offer to the Divine as a food. That only can be the food for the Divine – a full moon inside.

Awareness works in a double way. It creates a sun, and it also creates a moon. We talked about how it creates a sun inside. When you become aware of whatsoever is happening in you, of the innermost unconscious activities, you become Enlightened. The very cells of your body become conscious; you become light. Your consciousness reaches to the very pores of your body. Just like the rays of the sun reach into the earth, your inner awareness, once awakened, begins to work in every cell of the body and every fiber, every nerve of the body. Your whole body is filled with light. But this is only one part of awareness, this is only one process of awareness. Rays from your center also go to your periphery, to the circumference. The more your rays go to the circumference, the cooler your center becomes.

I do not know whether you have heard of a particular theory about the sun – the outer sun; I do not know whether it is right or not, but it is meaningful in helping to understand the inner reality. They say the sun at its deepest center is the coolest spot in the solar system; it is not hot at all. The heat is only on the periphery, on the circumference, not in the inner center of the sun. Because of helium gas around the sun, heat is created; because of the helium and its chain explosion of atoms, heat is created, and then the heat spreads to the solar family.

The sun has a body, and it is the center. The solar family is the body, and the earth belongs to the body as a cell. The heat goes to the solar family, it spreads. But the sun in itself is a cold thing, absolutely cold, and at its deepest center, it is the coldest spot in existence. It should be so because reality exists in polarities. If the sun is the hottest thing, it must have something inside it which balances the heat. Take a wheel that is just moving on the street: the wheel moves, but in the center the hub on which it moves remains still. The movement must have something non-moving in the center, otherwise movement will not be possible.

In this world of manifestations, everything exists within polar opposites. You are alive because you have death inside. If you had no death inside, you could not be alive. So do not think that one day it suddenly happens that death comes to you. It is an inner growth. It is not something that you meet, that you encounter – no! It is something toward which you are daily growing. One day the growth is complete, and you are dead. It is an inner phenomenon. You are alive with a death center. You cannot be alive without a death center.

Nothing exists without its polar opposite. Life and death are just two positive and negative realities. So it looks logical, dialectical also, but it is not yet proved that the sun has at its center a cold spot, an absolutely cold spot, the polar opposite to the heat on its circumference. It may be true; it may not be true: that is irrelevant. But inside it is absolutely true. When you become aware, the heat begins to travel toward your circumference. Each cell of your body will become heated, warm, because of the awareness penetrating. The second counterpart will be that your center of being will become cooler and cooler and cooler. That is the moon working. The sun is the warmth spreading, the light spreading.

And you must know that light has two qualities – light and warmth. Heat is just concentrated light; light is nothing but dispersed heat. So when light travels to your body, every cell will become warm, enlightened, aware. Sleep is a cold thing; night is a cold thing. That is why we sleep in the night: it is a cold time. And in the morning, with the rising sun, everything becomes warm, alive. Then it is difficult to sleep and easy to be awake.

When your circumference is cold, when each body cell is cold, asleep, your center will be a hot spot. Because of that hot spot in the center, you will be sexual, you will be angry, you will be greedy, you will be everything. Your center will be in a fever. This heat begins to travel. Of course, when heat leaves your center, it spreads; and the more it spreads, the less it is heat and the more it is light.

The sunrays on the earth are life giving. They have travelled much. If you go nearer and nearer to them, they will become death giving, because then they will not be warm: then they will be just pure fire.

As it is, the whole-body structure is just cold. You feel heat only in anger, in sex, in desire, in passion. That is not light, but simply a feverish phenomenon. Because of this, sex is felt as a release – because you lose a certain quantity of heat, and you are relieved; you lose a certain quantity of fever, and you are released. [. . . . ]

In sex you are releasing a particular amount of energy. They say that in one sex act you release 120 calories of heat – 120 calories! It is the same if you run fast for one mile. Then you will release the same amount of calories – 120. That is why there is much talk about whether sex can help heart disease. It can help! It releases energy. For persons who are well fed, it helps to delay heart disease. It releases energy, but it is not a solution. It is just a temporary arrangement. It just creates a leakage in your system from which energy is released.

Any day that you are angry your whole body is heated. It becomes feverish. The center releases anger: energy comes to the periphery. Ordinarily it is cold. The periphery is cold ordinarily, and the center is hot. The reverse will be the case when awareness happens to you. When you meditate and go deep within, when you become aware of every activity, everything will take a turn – an about turn. Your periphery will not go into anger, not go into sex, not go into greed, not go into passion. It will lose its coldness – its sleepy coldness. It will become warm, alive and aware. And because this energy is released to the periphery every twenty-four hours continuously, you will not need any anger or any sex.

A Buddha doesn’t need anger. It is absolutely useless for him because the very energy system has changed. He is using his heat for light and you are using your light for heat. The same fuel can be used to burn your house and the same fuel can be used to light it. The fuel is the same, but the direction changes. The inner fuel, the inner energy, becomes fire – suicidal. It burns you down, and ultimately you are just ashes. In the end, when death comes near you, you are just ashes. Everything is burnt out because you used your energy not as a light, but as a fire.

It becomes fire if it is concentrated in the center and is released only temporarily, whenever it is overflowing. In a sudden shock it comes to the periphery and is released. This is a very chaotic state. You go on accumulating it inside. Then one day it is overflowing, and you have to throw it.

We go on rationalizing our actions. When you get angry you say that someone has made you angry. No, really, it is that you were ready: you were overflowing inside. You do not know this because you were not aware. You were overflowing with a certain amount of energy which was waiting to be released. When someone abuses you, insults you, and you become angry, you think that this person is creating anger in you.

No, this person is simply giving you a situation and opportunity to release the overflowing energy. In a way, he is your friend, a helper. If he is not there you will be in a very difficult situation. If no one is giving you any opportunity to throw your energy, you will project, you will imagine something, and you will get angry with anything at all.

People get angry with their shoes; they will throw them. They can get angry with the door; they become violent with it. They can be angry with everything. When no opportunity is given, they can even become angry with themselves. They will begin to harm themselves or they will create some substitutes. […]

If you have energy in the center which is feverish, not transferred to the periphery, not used as light for the whole body and for your whole being, this is bound to happen. Every day you will accumulate energy, and then you will have to throw it. And this is nonsense! For the whole life you are doing this: accumulating, throwing; accumulating, throwing. What are you doing twenty-four hours a day? Just accumulating energy to throw it. Then when energy is there, the only problem is how to throw it. So we throw it in sex, in anger, in greed. When energy is thrown, then the only problem is how to accumulate it.

What sort of life is this? A vicious circle. With awareness the whole mechanism changes. With awareness, every moment your inner center is sending its energy to every pore of your body. And your body is not a small thing. It is a miniature universe. As above, so below: everybody is a small universe. And when I say “small,” I feel guilty because, really, it is not small. It is as vast as the universe. But because of our language, there are problems. The universe appears vast and your body appears small.

What is the difference between the two? They say that if we can throw out all space from the earth, if we can compress it and throw out the space, if the vacant space in it is thrown out, our earth will be just like a small ball. If we can throw out all the empty space from the Himalayas, they can be put into a match box. The material is not much, the matter is not much. The matter is very small, only the emptiness in it is vast.

So how to judge whether a thing is big or small? A very small thing can be blown up to any bigness if we put space in it. If we put as much space into your body as there is in the earth, you will be like the earth. So all the differences are of spaces – empty spaces. No difference is there really.

But when I say, “a small universe,” I mean only this: that everything that exists in the universe exists in you also. Whatsoever may be the measure, exactly everything exists in you also. So when your solar center, your sun, releases energy, it releases it in two ways. Either you are unconscious: then it releases it into sex, anger, greed and other diseases. Or if you are conscious, through this consciousness, heat is transformed into light: then it is released as light. Then you are under a shower of light continuously. Your every pore, your every cell, is bathed. There is a continuous shower of light. When this happens, your inner center begins to become cooler and cooler and cooler, and ultimately it becomes the coldest spot.

Hindus have a myth that Shankara lives on Kailash. Kailash is the coldest mythological spot– the coldest peak, the highest peak – and it is always covered with snow. This is just a symbolic way of saying that you have the coldest spot – a Kailash – in you. But you can know it only when the heat is transformed into light – never before. And the more you become aware, the more heat is transformed into light, and you begin to feel a moon inside. You begin to feel a cool, silent pool.

This sutra says:

Accumulation of the nectar of the inner full moon . . .

In the beginning, of course, you will feel it and miss it. It is just like the first day’s moon. Then there is the second-day moon, the third-day moon. You feel it and it is gone; then it grows again; then comes the full-moon night. Just like this, this inner spot of coolness grows. As your consciousness grows, your heat is transformed into light. As your periphery becomes enlightened, as your each and every cell is filled with light and becomes aware and awake, this inner moon grows. Sometimes you feel it and sometimes you miss it. Sometimes there is an inner cool breeze, and you know something has happened inside. You feel it, but then you miss it again. Then it goes on growing. Ultimately, when there is no unconsciousness left and your total energy has become light, you come to know the full moon.

Buddha has talked about this full moon in negative terms because it is the negative pole. So Buddha says that when this inner silence is achieved, it is nirvana. The word is very meaningful in reference to this sutra. Nirvana means “cessation of the flame”: a lamp is burning and then the flame disappears.

When your heat is totally transformed into light, there is no flame. That is why the moon symbol is used. The moon has light but no flame. That is why its light is cool. It is without flame, without fire. Light is there without any flame. The flame has disappeared.

When one first becomes acquainted with the sun, the light becomes like a flame, burning, hot. So if you analyze the life, the inner life, of a Buddha or of a Jesus, or of a Mahavir, many things will become apparent which are ordinarily hidden. For example, whenever a person like Buddha is born, the early life will be very revolutionary, because the moment one enters the inside the first experience is a fiery flame. The more Buddha grows older, the more the inner coolness is felt, the more the moon becomes perfect. Revolution is lost: then Buddha’s words are not revolutionary.

Jesus couldn’t get this opportunity. He was killed when he was still a revolutionary. That is why, if you compare Buddha’s sayings with Jesus’ sayings, there is a clear-cut distinction and difference. Jesus’ sayings look like that of a young man – hot! Buddha’s early sayings are also like that, but he lived to be eighty. He was not killed.

There are reasons. And one reason is this: India always knew that this happens: whenever a person goes in, the first expression is fiery, revolutionary, rebellious. That is why India never killed anyone. That is why India could never behave as Greeks behaved with Socrates and Jews behaved with Jesus. India knew much. It has known many, many such persons. India knows it is natural that whenever a Buddha enters into himself the first experience will be revolutionary. He will burst open, explode into a fiery flame. But then the flame will disappear, and ultimately there will be only a moon – silent, cool, with no fire but only light.

Jesus was killed. That is why Christianity has still remained incomplete. Christianity was based on early Jesus – on Jesus when he was just a flame. That is why Christianity has remained incomplete. Buddhism is complete. It has known Buddha in all stages. It has known Buddha’s moon in all stages – from the first day to the full-moon light. This crucifixion has been unfortunate for the West. It has proved one of the greatest misfortunes in history that Jesus was killed when he was only thirty-three, just a flame. The flame would have turned into moonlight, but the opportunity was not given. And the reason was only this: that the Jews were not aware of the inner phenomenon.

India knew many, many Buddhas, and it is always the case that whenever someone enters in, he first sees the fire, the flame, and the revolutionary spirit comes up. But if one goes on in and in, it dissolves, and then there is only silence – a moonlight silence.

This sutra says, “Accumulation of the nectar of the inner full moon . . .” This silence, this cool silence of the moon, Hindus have called nectar, the amrit, the elixir. It is not to be found somewhere else. It is in you. This nectar is in you! Once you are established in this nectar, once you are in this pool of cool moonlight, then you are a full moon inside. Then you have known both the polarities. You have known life; you have known death. You have known the sun; you have known the moon. You have known both the polarities – life and death. And once you have known both you have transcended both. That is why it is called the nectar, amrit.

Now you will not die. Now you are drunk with elixir; you cannot die. But you will not be alive in the old sense either. You have died in the old sense; you are reborn in a new meaning. Now death will not be a death and life will not be a life. Now you will be beyond both. [. . . . ]

This inner phenomenon is beyond birth and death. It is never born and never will it die, because that which is born can die and that which is not born cannot die. Death needs birth as a prerequisite, as a necessary prerequisite. You cannot die if you are not born. With this inner phenomenon – when sun and moon are balanced, when the dialectical process is finished, when the synthesis is complete – you come to feel in yourself something which is eternal.

That is why this sutra says, “Accumulation of the nectar of the inner full moon is naivedya.” Now you have become food yourself. Now you can offer yourself to the Divine. Now you are food. Now you are eternal. And why is it called “food,” naivedya? Because when you are eternal, you can become food for the eternal. And by “food” the ordinary meaning is also implied. When you take food in, it becomes one with you. It becomes your blood, it becomes your bones, it becomes you: you are your food! So when you have come to know this inner reality, the eternal reality, you can offer it as food to the universe, to the existence.

By this is meant that now you can become the bones of the universe, you can become the blood of the universe. Now you can be one with it just like food becomes one with you. The meeting is complete because you have become food for the Divine. Then you are naivedya. Then the offering can be accepted.

But you cannot offer your body as the food. It will be food, but for the vultures, not for the Divine. This cannot be offered as food for the Divine. Your body comes out of the earth and goes back to the earth. It can only be eaten by the earth again: “Dust unto dust.” It can only return to dust, so this body cannot be offered to the Divine.

One young seeker came to Gautam Buddha. He said, “I have come to offer myself to you. Accept me.”

Buddha asked him, “What are you offering – your body? But that is already offered and the earth will claim it, so how can you offer it to me? What are you offering? Tell me exactly!”

The man was confused. He said, “Whatsoever I have, I offer to you.”

Buddha asked him, “What do you have? What is it that belongs to you? Do your thoughts belong to you? They belong to the society; your mind belongs to the society. Your body belongs to your parents, to the earth, to the sky, to water, to fire, to many things – to the five elements. What do you have that you can offer to me?”

The man could not answer because he had nothing else. He could not think of anything else, so Buddha said, “Do not offer now. First find out what you are. And the moment you find it, it is already offered. Then there is no need to offer.”

When you find the inner balance that is known from finding the sun and finding the moon, only when you know both, they balance each other, and in that balance you escape from duality. And then the third angle of the triangle is touched. For the first time you are above yourself: you are the inner self. Now you can look down at yourself – at your sun, your moon, your body, your soul, your positivity, your negativity, your male, your female. Now you can look down at yourself – at the whole world of duality, at multidimensional duality – and now you can become naivedya, the food offering.

But now there is no need even to offer: you have already offered. Now there is no need to ask to be accepted: you are already accepted. You are one. Just as food becomes one with you, you become one with the Divine. And by “Divine” I mean the Whole, the Totality, everything – the very Existence.

So what to do? Transform heat into light: that is the mantra: transform heat into light! Do not use heat as heat: use it as light. When you think anger is coming to you, close your eyes and meditate on what anger is. Dig deep inside and find out the source from where it is coming. What we are doing ordinarily is just the opposite. When we get angry, we begin to think about the object of anger, about who has created it, and not of the source of anger, from where it is coming. When you get angry, close your eyes. This is the right moment to meditate.

Close your eyes, go in, and find out from where this anger is coming. Follow it to the very source. Go deep, and you will come to the source of heat from where the accumulated energy is bursting forth to go out.

Observe it; do not indulge in it – because if you indulge in it, it will be thrown out without being transformed. And do not suppress it – because if you suppress it, it will be thrown back to the original source which is overflowing. It cannot absorb it. It will be thrown back again with a more forceful movement. So do not suppress it and do not indulge in it. Just be conscious. Move inward to the source. This very movement slows down the process; this very observation transforms the quality of anger, because this calm observation is an antidote.

Anger and calm observation are different phenomena. When this calm observation enters into anger, it changes the energy, the very chemical composition of it, and the heat becomes light. That is the change: heat becomes light! Then the anger is neither thrown back to the original source which cannot contain it because it is overflowing, nor is it thrown to the object in a wastage, a foolish wastage. Then this energy neither moves out to the object of anger, nor is it suppressed back to the original source. With observation this energy becomes diffused. It moves to the periphery of your body as light. When diffused, it moves as light, and the very anger becomes ojas, the very anger becomes a light, an inner light.

So do not be disturbed and disappointed if you have much anger. That only shows you have much energy. A person born without anger cannot be transformed. He has no energy. So be happy that you have energy, but do not misuse it. Energy can be misused; it can be transformed. Energy in itself is neutral. It will not tell you what to do with it – you have to decide. This is the secret science of inner alchemy – to change heat into light, to change coal into diamonds, to change baser elements into gold.

These are just symbols. Alchemists were not really concerned with changing baser metals into higher metals, but they had to hide and they had to make an esoteric, secret symbology, because it was very difficult in past ages to talk about the inner science and not be murdered or killed. Jesus was killed: he was an alchemist. And the Christianity that developed, that followed Jesus, went quite against him. The Christian Church began to kill and murder those who were again trying alchemy.

This word “alchemy” is very beautiful. Our “chemistry” is born out of alchemy. The word “chemistry” comes from “alchemy,” but “alchemy” itself is a very deep and significant word. The word “alchemy” comes from Egypt. The old name of Egypt was “Khem” and “Al Khem” means “the secret science of Egypt.” The Egyptians were deep in the alchemy of inner transformation, in how to transform the inner chemistry. [. . . . ]

This process is alchemical. Observe anger, and anger is transformed into light. Observe sex, and sex is transformed into light. Observe any inner phenomenon which creates heat. Observe it, and through observation it becomes light. And if your every heat phenomenon is transformed into light, you will come to feel the inner moon. And when there is no heat left, then you have accumulated the nectar of the full moon.

And through this nectar you become immortal. Not in this body, not with this body: you become immortal because you transcend life and death both.

Then you are naivedya: then you are a food offering to the Divine – to the Total.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.2, Discourse #5

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The Light of Awareness – Osho

We feel that to penetrate and transform the deeper layers of the unconscious only through awareness is difficult and not enough. What else should one do other than the practice of awareness? Please explain more about the practical dimensions of this matter.

The unconscious can be transformed only through awareness. It is difficult, but there is no other way. There are many methods for being aware, but awareness is necessary. You can use methods to be aware, but you will have to be aware.

If someone asks whether there is any method to dispel darkness except by light, howsoever difficult it may be, that is the only way – because darkness is simply the absence of light. So you have to create the presence of light, and then darkness is not there.

Unconsciousness is nothing but an absence – the absence of consciousness. It is not something positive in itself, so you cannot do anything except be aware. If unconsciousness were something in its own right, then it would be a different matter – but it is not. Unconsciousness doesn’t mean something; it only means not consciousness. It is just an absence. It has no existence in itself; in itself it is not. The word “unconscious” simply shows the absence of consciousness and nothing else. When we say “darkness” the word is misleading, because the moment we say “darkness” it appears that darkness is something that is there. It is not, so you cannot do anything with darkness directly – or can you?

You may not have observed the fact, but with darkness you cannot do anything directly. Whatsoever you want to do with darkness you will have to do with light, not with darkness. If you want darkness, then put off light. If you don’t want darkness, then put on light. But you cannot do anything directly with darkness; you will have to go via light.

Why? Why can you not go directly? You cannot go directly because there is nothing like darkness, so you cannot touch it directly. You have to do something with light, and then you have done something with darkness.

If light is there, then darkness is not there. If light is not there, then darkness is there. You can bring light into this room, but you cannot bring darkness. You can take light out from this room, but you cannot take darkness out from this room. There exists no connection between you and darkness. Why? If darkness were there, then man could be related somehow, but darkness is not there.

Language gives you a fallacy that darkness is something. Darkness is a negative term. It exists not. It connotes only that light is not there – nothing more – and the same is with unconsciousness. So when you ask what to do other than to be aware, you ask an irrelevant question. You will have to be aware; you cannot do anything else.

Of course, there are many methods for being aware – mm? – that is a different thing. There are many ways to create light – but light will have to be created. You can create a fire and there will be no darkness. And you can use a kerosene lamp and there will be no darkness, and you can use electricity and there will be no darkness. But whatsoever the case, whatsoever the method of producing light, light has to be produced.

So light is a must, and whatsoever I will say in reference to this question will be about methods to produce awareness. They are not alternatives, remember. They are not alternatives to awareness – nothing can be. Awareness is the only possibility for dispelling darkness, for dispelling unconsciousness. But how to create awareness? I talked about one method which is the purest: to be aware inside of whatsoever happens on the boundary line of the unconscious and of the conscious – to be aware there.

Anger is there. Anger is produced in darkness; anger has roots in the unconscious. Only branches and leaves come into the conscious. Roots, seeds, the energy source, are in the unconscious. You become aware only of faraway branches. Be conscious of these branches. The more conscious you are, the more you will be capable of looking into darkness.

Have you observed at any time that if you look deeply in darkness for a certain time, a certain dim light begins to be there? If you concentrate in darkness, you begin to feel and you begin to see. You can train yourself, and then in darkness itself there is a certain amount of light – because, really, in this world nothing can be absolute, and nothing is. Everything is relative. When we say “darkness,” it doesn’t mean absolute darkness. It only means that there is less light. If you practice to see in it, you will be capable of seeing. Look! Focus yourself in the darkness! And then, by and by, your eyes are strengthened and you begin to see.

Inner darkness, unconsciousness, is the same. Look into it. But you can look only if you are not active. If you begin to act, your mind is distracted. Don’t act inside. Anger is there – don’t act, don’t condemn, don’t appreciate, don’t indulge in it, and don’t suppress it. Don’t do anything – just look at it! Observe it! Understand the distinction.

What happens ordinarily is quite the reverse. If you are angry, then your mind is focused on the cause of anger outside – always! Someone has insulted you – you are angry. Now there are three things: the cause of anger outside, the source of anger inside, and in between these two you are. Anger is your energy inside, the cause which has provoked your energy to come up is outside, and you are in between. The natural way of the mind is not to be aware of the source, but to be focused on the cause outside. Whenever you are angry you are in deep concentration on the cause outside.

Mahavir has called krodha – anger – a sort of meditation. He has named it roudra dhyan – meditation on negative attitudes. It is! – because you are concentrated. Really, when you are in deep anger you are so concentrated that the whole world disappears. Only the cause of anger is focused. Your total energy is on the cause of anger, and you are so much focused on the cause that you forget yourself completely. That’s why in anger you can do things about which, later on, you can say, “I did them in spite of myself.” You were not.

For awareness you have to take an about-turn. You have to concentrate not on the cause outside, but on the source inside. Forget the cause. Close your eyes, and go deep and dig into the source. Then you can use the same energy which was to be wasted on someone outside . . . the energy moves inwards. Anger has much energy. Anger is energy, the purest of fires inside. Don’t waste it outside.

Take another example. You are feeling sexual: sex is again energy, fire. But whenever you feel sexual, again you are focused on someone outside, not on the source. You begin to think of someone – of the lover, of the beloved, A-B-C-D – but when you are filled with sex your focus is always on the other. You are dissipating energy. [. . .]

Science is more concerned with the cause and religion is more concerned with the source. The source is always inside; the cause is always outside. With cause you are in a chain reaction. With cause you are connected with your environment. With source you are connected with yourself. So remember this. This is the purest method to change unconscious energy into conscious energy. Take an about-turn – look inside! It is going to be difficult because our look has become fixed. We are like a person whose neck is paralyzed and who cannot move and look back. Our eyes have become fixed. We have been looking outside for lives together – for millennia – so we don’t know how to look inside.

Do this: whenever something happens in your mind, follow it to the source. Anger is there – a sudden flash has come to you – close your eyes, meditate on it. From where is this anger arising? Never ask the question: who has made it possible? Who has made you angry? That is a wrong question. Ask which energy in you is transforming into anger – from where is this anger coming up, bubbling up? What is the source inside from where this energy is coming?

Are you aware that in anger you can do something which you cannot do when you are not in anger? A person in anger can throw a big stone easily. When he is not angry he cannot even lift it. He has much energy when he is angry. A hidden source is now with him. So if a man is mad, he becomes very strong. Why? From where is this energy coming? It is not coming from anything outside. Now all his sources are burning simultaneously – anger, sex, everything, is burning simultaneously. Every source is available.

Be concerned with from where anger is bubbling up, from where the sex desire has come in. Follow it, take steps backwards. Meditate silently and go with anger to the roots. It is difficult but it is not impossible. It is not easy. It is not going to be easy because it is a fight against a long, rooted habit. The whole past has to be broken, and you have to do something new which you have never done before. It is just the weight of sheer habit which will create the difficulty. But try it, and then you are creating a new direction for energy to move. You are beginning to be a circle, and in a circle energy is never dissipated.

My energy comes up and moves outside – it can never become a circle now – it is simply dissipated. If my movement inwards is there, then the same energy which was going out turns upon itself. My meditation leads this energy back to the same source from where the anger was coming. It becomes a circle. This inner circle is the strength of a Mahavir. The sex energy, not moving to someone else, moves back to its own source. This circle of sex energy is the strength of a buddha.

We are weaklings, not because we have less energy than a buddha: we have the same quanta of energy, everyone is born with the same energy quanta, but we are accustomed to dissipating it. It simply moves away from us and never comes back. It cannot come back! Once it is out of you, it can never come back – it is beyond you.

A word arises in me: I speak it out; it has flown away. It is not going to come back to me, and the energy that was used in producing it, that was used in throwing it away, is dissipated. A word arises in me: I don’t throw it out; I remain silent. Then the word moves and moves and moves, and falls into the original source again. The energy has been reconsumed.

Silence is energy. Brahmacharya is energy. Not to be angry is energy. But this is not suppression. If you suppress anger, you have used energy again. Don’t suppress – observe and follow. Don’t fight – just move backwards with the anger. This is the purest method of awareness.

But certain other things can be used. For beginners, certain devices are possible. So I will talk about three devices. One type of device is based on body awareness. Forget anger, forget sex – they are difficult problems. And when you are in them, you become so mad that you cannot meditate. When you are angry you cannot meditate; you cannot even think about meditation. You are just mad. So forget it; it is difficult. Then use your own body as a device for awareness.

Buddha has said that when you walk, walk consciously. When you breathe, breathe consciously. The Buddhist method is known as anapanasati yoga – the yoga of the incoming and outgoing breath, incoming and outgoing breath awareness. The breath comes in: move with the breath; know, be aware, that the breath is moving in. When the breath has gone out again, move with it. Be in, be out, with the breath.

Anger is difficult, sex is difficult – breath is not so difficult. Move with the breath. Don’t allow any breath to be in or out without consciousness. This is a meditation. Now you will be focused on breathing, and when you are focused on breathing thoughts stop automatically. You cannot think, because the moment you think your consciousness moves from breath to thought. You have missed breathing.

Try this and you will know. When you are aware of breathing, thoughts cease. The same energy which is used for thoughts is being used in being aware of breath. If you start thinking, you will lose track of the breath, you will forget, and you will think. You cannot do both simultaneously.

If you are following breathing, it is a long process. One has to go into it deeply. It takes a minimum of three months and a maximum of three years. If it is done continuously twenty-four hours a day . . . it is a method for monks, those who have given up everything; only they can watch their breathing twenty-four hours a day. That’s why Buddhist monks and other traditions of monks, they reduce their living to the minimum so that no disturbance is there. They will beg for their food and they will sleep under a tree – that’s all. Their whole time is devoted to some inner practice of being aware – mm? – for example, of breath.

A Buddhist monk moves. He has to be continuously aware of his breath. The silence that you see on a Buddhist monk’s face is the silence of the awareness of breathing and nothing else. If you become aware your face will become silent, because if thoughts are not there your face cannot show anxiety, thinking. Your face becomes relaxed. Continuous awareness of breathing will stop the mind. The continuously troubled mind will stop. And if the mind stops and you are simply aware of breathing – if the mind is not functioning – you cannot be angry, you cannot be sexual.

Sex or anger or greed or jealousy or envy – anything needs the mechanism of mind. And if the mechanism stops, you cannot do anything. This again leads to the same thing. Now the energy that is used in sex, in anger, in greed, in ambition, has no outlet. And you go on continuously being concerned with breathing, day and night. Buddha has said, “Even in sleep try to be aware of breathing.” It will be difficult in the beginning, but if you can be aware in the day, then by and by this will penetrate into your sleep.

Anything penetrates into sleep if it has gone deep in the mind in the day. If you have been worried about a certain thing in the day, it gets into the sleep. If you were thinking continuously about sex, it gets into the sleep. If you were angry the whole day, anger gets into the sleep. So Buddha says there is no difficulty. If a person is continuously concerned with breathing and awareness of the breathing, ultimately it penetrates into the sleep. You cannot dream then. If your awareness is there of incoming breath and outgoing breath, then in sleep you cannot dream.

The moment you dream, this awareness will not be there. If awareness is there, dreams are impossible. So a Buddhist monk asleep is not just like you. His sleep has a different quality. It has a different depth and a certain awareness in it is there.

Ananda said to Buddha, “I have observed you for years and years together. It seems like a miracle: you sleep as if you are awake. You are in the same posture the whole night.” The hand would not move from the place where it had been put; the leg would remain in the same posture. Buddha would sleep in the same posture the whole night. Not a single movement! For nights together Ananda would sit and watch and wonder, “What type of sleep is this!” Buddha would not move. He would be as if a dead body, and he would wake up in the same posture in which he went to sleep. Ananda asked, “What are you doing? Were you asleep or not? You never move!”

Buddha said, “A day will come, Ananda, when you will know. This shows that you are not practicing anapanasati yoga rightly; it shows only this. Otherwise, this question would not have arisen. You are not practicing anapanasati yoga – if you are continuously aware of your breath in the day, it is impossible not to be conscious of it in the night. And if the mind is concerned with awareness, dreams cannot penetrate. And if there are no dreams, mind is clear, transparent. Your body is asleep, but you are not. Your body is relaxing, you are aware – the flame is there inside. So, Ananda,” Buddha is reported to have said, “I am not asleep – only the body is sleep. I am aware! and not only in sleep. Ananda – when I die, you will see: I will be aware, only the body will die.”

Practice awareness with breathing; then you will be capable of penetrating. Or practice awareness with body movements. Buddha has a word for it: he calls it “mindfulness.” He says, “Walk mindfully.” We walk without any mind in it.

A certain man was sitting before Buddha when he was talking one day. He was moving his leg and a toe unnecessarily. There was no reason for it. Buddha stopped talking and asked that man, “Why are you moving your leg? Why are you moving your toe?” Suddenly, as the Buddha asked, the man stopped. Then Buddha asked, “Why have you stopped so suddenly?”

The man said, “Why, I was not even aware that I was moving my toe or my leg! I was not aware! The moment you asked, I became aware.”

Buddha said, “What nonsense! Your leg is moving and you are not aware? So what are you doing with your body? Are you an alive man or dead? This is your leg, this is your toe, and it goes on moving and you are not even aware? Then of what are you aware? You can kill a man and you can say, ‘I was not aware.’” And, really, those who kill are not aware. It is difficult to kill someone when you are aware.

Buddha would say, “Move, walk, but be filled with consciousness. Know inwardly you are walking.” You are not to use any words; you are not to use any thoughts. You are not to say inside, “I am walking,” because if you say it then you are not aware of walking – you have become aware of your thought, and you have missed walking. Just be somatically aware – not mentally. Just feel that you are walking. Create a somatic awareness, a sensitivity, so that you can feel directly without mind coming in.

The wind is blowing – you are feeling it. Don’t use words. Just feel, and be mindful of the feeling. You are lying down on the beach, and the sand is cool, deeply cool. Feel it! – don’t use words. Just feel it – the coolness of it, the penetrating coolness of it. Just feel! Be conscious of it; don’t use words. Don’t say, “The sand is very cool.” The moment you say it you have missed an existential moment. You have become intellectual about it.

You are with your lover or with your beloved: feel the presence; don’t use words. Just feel the warmth, the love flowing. Just feel the oneness that has happened. Don’t use words. Don’t say, “I love you,” you will have destroyed it. The mind has come in. And the moment you say, “I love you,” it has become a past memory. Just feel without words. Anything felt without words, felt totally without the mind coming in, will give you a mindfulness.

You are eating: eat mindfully; taste everything mindfully. Don’t use words. The taste is itself such a great and penetrating thing. Don’t use words and don’t destroy it. Feel it to the core. You are drinking water: feel it passing through the throat; don’t use words. Just feel it; be mindful about it. The movement of the water, the coolness, the disappearing thirst, the satisfaction that follows – feel it!

You are sitting in the sun: feel the warmth; don’t use words. The sun is touching you. There is a deep communion. Feel it! In this way, somatic awareness, bodily awareness, is developed. If you develop a bodily awareness, again mind comes to a stop. Mind is not needed. And if mind stops, you are again thrown into the deep unconscious. With a very, very deep alertness you can penetrate. Now you have a light with you, and the darkness disappears.

Those who are bodily oriented, for them it is good to be somatically mindful. For those who are not bodily oriented it is better to be conscious of breathing. Those who feel it difficult, they can use some artificial devices. For example, mantra – mm? – it is an artificial device for being aware. You use a mantra such as “Rama-Rama-Rama” continuously. Inside you create a circle of “Rama-Rama-Rama” or “Aum” or “Allah,” or anything. Go on repeating it. But simple repetition is of no use. Side by side, be aware. When you are chanting “Rama-Rama-Rama,” be aware of the chanting. Listen to it – “Rama-Rama-Rama” – be aware.

It will be difficult to be aware of anger because anger comes suddenly and you cannot plan it. And when it comes you are so overwhelmed that you may forget it. So create a device like “Rama-Rama- Rama.” You can create it, and it will not be a sudden method. And if used for a long time, it becomes an inner sound. Whatsoever you are doing, there will be “Rama-Rama” as a silent sequence. Be aware of it. Then the mantra is complete, the japa is complete, the chanting is complete, when you are not only the creator of the sound but also the listener. It is not only that you are saying “Rama” – you are also listening to it. The circle is complete. I say something. You listen; the energy is dissipated. If you yourself say “Rama” and you yourself listen to it, the energy comes back. You are the speaker, you are the listener.

But be aware of it. It should not become a dead routine. Otherwise, you can go on saying “Rama- Rama-Rama” just like a parrot, without any awareness behind it. Then it is of no use. It may create a deep sleep even. It may become a hypnosis. You may become dull. Mm? Krishnamurti says that those who chant mantras, they become dull, they become stupid. And he is right in a way, but only in a way. If you use any chanting just as a mechanical repetition, you will become dull. Look at the so-called religious people: they are just dull and stupid. No intelligence, no flame in their eyes of life, of aliveness. They just look dead, like lead, heavy. They have not given anything to the world, they have not created anything. They have just repeated mantras.

Of course, if you go on repeating a particular mantra without awareness, you will be bored by it yourself, and boredom will create stupidity. You will become dull; you will lose interest. A certain sound repeated continuously can even create madness. But Krishnamurti is right only in a sense; otherwise he is completely totally wrong. And whenever one judges something by those who are not following it, really that judgement is not good. Anything must be judged by the perfect example.

The science of japa is not just to repeat. Repetition is secondary. It is just a device to create something of which to be aware. The real thing is to be aware. The basic thing is to be aware. If you build a house, the house is secondary. You build it to live in. And if there is no living, and you create a house and live outside, then you are foolish.

Repetition of a certain name or sound is creating a house to live in. It is creating a certain milieu inside. And if you have created it, you can manipulate it more easily than sudden happenings. And by and by you can become accustomed to it, related to it in a deep consciousness – but the real thing, the basic thing, is to be conscious of it.

The science of japa says that when you become a hearer of your own sound, then you have reached. Then you have completed the japa. And there is much in it. When you see a sound, for example, “Rama,” your peripheral apparatus is used in creating it, your vocal apparatus. Or it you create a mental sound, then your mind is used to create it. But when you become alert about it, that alertness is of the center, not of the periphery. If I say “Rama,” this is on the periphery of my being. When I listen to this sound “Rama” inside, that is from my center – because awareness belongs to the center. If you become aware in the center, now you have the light with you. You can dispel unconsciousness.

Mantra can be used as a technique; there are many, many methods. But any method is just an effort towards awareness. You cannot escape awareness. You can start from wherever you like, but awareness is the goal. [. . . .]

These are all methods of will: you will have to do something.

On the path of will, there are only guides. There are not really Gurus, Masters. There are simply guides. They instruct you; you have to do everything. They cannot do. [. . . .]

The last dying words of Buddha to Ananda are, “Ananda, be a lamp unto yourself. Don’t follow me: appa deepo bhava – Be a lamp unto yourself! Don’t follow me.” Ananda was following Buddha continuously for forty years. It was not a small period. For his whole life Ananda had followed devotedly, and no one could say that his devotion was imperfect in any way or incomplete. It was total. But Ananda, the most devoted follower, could not achieve Enlightenment, and the death of Buddha was nearing.

One day Buddha said, “Now, today I am going to leave this body.”

So Ananda began to weep and said, “What will I do now? For forty years I have been following you in every single detail.”

Even Buddha could not say, “You have not followed and that’s why you have not reached.” He had followed and he was sincere, but he was still an ignorant man.

Buddha said, “Unless I die, Ananda, it seems you will not reach.”

“Why?” Ananda asked. Buddha said, “Unless I die, you cannot return to yourself. You are too much attached to me, and I have become the barrier. You have followed me, but you have forgotten yourself completely.”

You can follow a Teacher blindly and still reach nowhere – if you are just following the Teacher according to you. Remember these words: “according to you.” Then you have not surrendered. Surrender means now you are no more there to decide. The Teacher decides. Even if the Teacher is not there, surrender to the cosmic energy. Then the cosmic energy decides. The moment you surrender, your gates are thrown open and the cosmic flood enters you from everywhere and transforms you.

Look at it this way: my house is filled with darkness. I can do two things. Either I have to create light in my house – then I will have to create it; or, I can open my doors and the sun is outside. I just open my doors, and my house becomes a host to the Divine guest, to the sun, to the rays. Then I become receptive and the darkness disappears.

On the path of will, you have to create the light. On the path of surrender, light is there – you have just to be open. But when the house is dark and when everywhere there is darkness, one fears to open doors – one fears even more. Who knows whether light will enter or whether thieves will come in? So you lock up. You close every possibility so that nothing enters in. That is the situation.

Either create light by yourself: then the darkness disappears. Or use the cosmic light: that is always there. Then open yourself! Be vulnerable! Then don’t depend on anyone. Then be ready, whatsoever happens. If you are ready no matter what may happen, then darkness itself becomes light. With that readiness, nothing can remain dark. That very readiness transforms you totally.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.1, Discourse #18, Q1

For a related post see Path of Will or Path of Surrender.

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

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

The Inner Illumination – Osho

Sadaadeeptih apaar amrit vrittih snaanam.

To be centered constantly in the inner illumination and in the infinite inner nectar is the preparatory bath for the worship.

Light is the most mysterious thing in the universe – for many reasons. You may not have felt it like that, but the first thing about light is that light is the purest energy. Physics says that everything material is not really matter. Only energy is real. Matter is dead; matter exists no more. It never existed except in our conceptions. Matter appears to be, but it is not. Only light is – or energy, or electricity. The deeper we penetrate into matter; the less material is found. At the very deepest there is no matter and matter itself becomes non-material. But light remains, or energy.

Light is the purest energy. Light is not matter, and wherever we feel matter it is only light condensed. So matter means light condensed. This is the first mystery about light, because it is the substratum of all Existence. So in a new way, the oldest concept of religions – that in the beginning God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light – becomes very significant, because Existence in its purity is light. So if Existence begins, it has to begin with light.

Another thing: light can exist without life, but life cannot exist without light. So life also becomes secondary. Matter simply disappears. It is not. It is only condensed light. Then light can exist without life. Life is not a necessity for light to exist, but life cannot exist without light. So life becomes secondary, and light becomes primary. In this context, one thing more: just as light can exist without life but life cannot exist without light, just the same, life can exist without love, but love cannot exist without life. So these three l’s have to be remembered – light, life, love.

Light is the substratum, the ground, and love is the peak. Life is only an opportunity for tight to reach love. Life is just a passage. So if you are only alive, you are just in the passage. Unless you reach love, you have not reached. Light is the potentiality, love is the actuality, and life is only a passage. So when it is said that God is love, this is the love that is meant. Unless you become love, you are just in between, you have not reached the end. Light is the beginning, love is the end, and life is just a passage.

So remember this: light can exist without life. Matter is just an appearance, a “condensity”, an intensity of light, and life is a manifestation. That which is hidden in light is manifested. Life is not an appearance: life is a manifestation. Matter is just light condensed. So when light remains light and becomes condensed, it is matter. When light evolves, manifests its potentiality, it becomes life. If it simply remains life, then death is the end. If it evolves more, then it becomes love – and love is deathless. You may call it God; you may call it anything. These are basic points. If you remember them, then we can proceed into the sutra.

Thirdly, in this whole world everything is relative except light. Only light has a constant velocity. That’s why physics takes light as the measurement of time. Everything is relative; only light is, in a certain way, absolute. Light travels with a constant velocity. Nothing else is constant. So only light is absolute. There is no change: the velocity is absolute; the speed is absolute. So light becomes a mystery. It is not relative to anything, and everything else is relative to light. So nothing can travel with more speed than light, because if anything takes the speed just equivalent to light, it will turn into light.

If we can throw a stone with the speed of light, the stone will become light. Anything moving with the speed of light will become light. So nothing reaches the velocity of light, and nothing transcends the velocity of light. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. Anything travelling with that speed will become light. That’s why scientists say we cannot travel with the speed of light: because anything – we or aircraft, rockets – anything travelling with that speed will become light itself.

Fourthly, light travels without any vehicle; everything else can travel only with a vehicle. Only light travels without vehicles. That is mysterious. And also, light travels without any medium. Everything else has to travel through a medium. A fish can travel in water, a man can travel in air, but light travels in nothing, in nothingness.

In the beginning of this century, physicists just imagined something like ether. They imagined something must be there; otherwise, how can light travel? So that was a basic question: light comes to the earth from the sun or from some star, it travels, so there must be some medium through which it travels. So just because nothing can travel without a medium, in the beginning of this century scientists hypothetically assumed that there must be some X – they named it ether – through which light travels.

But now they have found that there is no medium. The whole universe is just a vast space, and light travels in nothingness. That means even nothingness cannot destroy it, even emptiness cannot affect it. That means even non-being cannot affect light’s being. And it can travel without any medium, without any vehicle. That means the energy is not derived from somewhere else. Light itself is the energy. If you have some derived energy, then you will have to travel through mediums, through vehicles; you cannot go yourself. Light goes by itself.

Fifthly, light is neither being pushed nor being pulled. It simply travels! If I throw a stone, then there is a push. I put my energy in the stone, and the stone will only go to the limit, to the extent, up to where it can be forced by my energy. When my energy fails or is exhausted, the stone will fall down.

The stone is not travelling with its own energy. The energy has been given to it; it is foreign.

Everything in the world has foreign energy in it – except light. Everything moving is moving with some energy derived from somewhere else. A tree is growing, but the energy has been derived. A flower is flowering, but the energy has been derived. You are breathing and living, but the energy is derived. You have no energy of your own. Nothing has except light.

In this reference, the saying of Mohammed in the Koran becomes very significant. He says, “God is light,” and he means there that only God is His own source of energy. Everything else is just derived.

So we really live a borrowed life. It is borrowed from many, many sources. That’s why our lives are conditional. If one source just refuses to give us energy, we are dead. Light lives with its own energy – unborrowed, self-originating. It is neither pushed nor pulled, and it moves. That’s the most mysterious thing possible. It is a miracle!

Sixthly, if only light has its own energy and everything else lives with borrowed energy, certainly it must be that everywhere, ultimately, the energy is borrowed from light – because if everything lives with borrowed energy except light, then ultimately light is the donor. Wherever you get your energy, ultimately the source must be light.

You are eating food and you are getting energy, but the food itself gets it through light, through sunrays, so you are not getting it from food. Food does not have its own energy source: food is deriving it from somewhere else. The food is doing only an in-between work, the work of a medium. Because you cannot absorb light directly, trees are absorbing it, and then they transform it in such a way, they compose it in such a way, that you can take that energy directly. So they work as mediums – then light becomes the only source of energy.

So if everything drops in the universe, light will not be affected. If everything just goes off, if the whole universe is dead, light will not be affected. The universe will still be filled with light. But if light goes off, then everything will die. Nothing can exist.

This basicness of light is not only basic for science, it is basic for religion also. So now the second part: if you penetrate matter you stumble upon light. If you penetrate life, you again stumble upon light. So religious mystics have always said, “We experience Light, we realize light – the light within, the flame within.” All the mystics have talked this way, and it is not only symbolic. Only in this century has it become possible to say that it is not only symbolic. If matter dissolves into light, comes out of light, why not life itself? And when a mystic goes deep, he is going deep in life, he stumbles upon light. This going deep in oneself means going more and more to the original source of light.

So the outer light is not the only light. You have inner light also, because you cannot exist without it. It is the base. To be means to be grounded in light; there is no other being. So when you go in you are bound to come to and realize a dimension, a realm, of light – inner light. This inner light and your life make just two layers. Your life is the outermost layer; light is a deeper layer.

Your life will end in death. Unless you realize the inner light, you cannot know the deathless, because your life is just a phenomenon; it is not the base. It is just a phenomenon, a wave – a wave on the ocean of light. It will go! If you can penetrate through it to the deeper realm of light, you will know that which is immortal, which cannot die – because only light cannot die, only light is immortal. Everything will have to die, because everything lives on derived life, borrowed life. Only light has its own life. Everything else has life borrowed from somewhere else. So one has to return it, one has to give it back.

So unless you realize the inner light, you will not know that which is beyond death. In a sense it is beyond death and beyond life also. Only then does it become immortal. That which is born will have to die; that which is alive will be dead. So only that can be beyond death which is beyond life itself. Light is beyond life and beyond death. Whenever mystics have been talking about light, they always talk about deathlessness, because the moment you enter the inner light, the source of life, you enter deathlessness.

In this sutra, both terms have been used. This sutra says:

To be centered constantly in the inner illumination, in the inner light, and in the infinite inner nectar, is the preparatory bath for the worship.

So unless you are bathed in your own inner light, and in the nectar, in the immortality which belongs to that light, you are not ready to enter the Divine temple. This is a preparatory bath. Water will not do: light has to be used. Pure light has to be used. Unless you are bathed in pure light, you are not ready to enter the Divine temple.

When Krishna showed his infiniteness to Arjuna, Arjuna said, “I don’t see you, Krishna, I see only light. Where have you gone? I see only thousands and thousands of suns – and I am scared. You come back!” When one enters into the inner light . . . it is there, because without it you cannot be. nothing can be. It is a scientific fact, because without light nothing can be. If there is anything, then in its ground light is bound to be. You may know it, you may not know it, but light is the ground of all. You are, so you have a deep realm of light. The moment you enter it, you are bathed. and this bath means many things.

Ordinarily, when you enter a temple, outwardly you take a bath. You take a bath because dirt can be washed from the body, and you can enter into the temple with a purer body – fresh, undirty, clean. But when you are really entering into the Divine temple. your body is not entering: your consciousness is entering. And you cannot bathe your consciousness with water. But consciousness can have a deep cleansing in inner light, and that deep cleansing means cleansing the dirt of all karma – all actions.

Whatsoever you have done, whatsoever you have been, whatsoever your past has been, it clings to you – just like dirt, just like dust, it clings to you. When you enter inner light, it disappears. Why? Because the moment you enter that inner light, everything takes the velocity of light, and nothing can remain. The dirt, the dirt of karmas, dissolves – all that you have done in all your lives. When you enter that realm, everything becomes light, because with light, in that velocity, nothing can remain anything else. So it is not simply a bath. All the karmas, just disappear, they become light, and the consciousness is cleaned. It becomes fresh and young as it should be, as it is meant to be.

And when all the karmas disappear – by “karmas” I mean the material dust that one accumulates through actions and desires and passions – when it disappears, the entity, the nucleus of ego disappears also, because ego exists only as a collectivity of all the dust, of all the dirtiness, of all the impurities. It exists as a center. When everything disappears, ego disappears. And when ego disappears, you are pure, clean, you are born anew. So to enter this inner light is to enter the inner fire.

Another thing: the light that is outside is constant, but it cannot be constant for you. The sun will rise and set. The sun itself never rises and never sets, but for the earth it rises, and it sets; the night comes. So with outer light you cannot remain constantly in light. Only with inner light is there no rising and no setting. That’s why the sutra says, “To be centered constantly . . .” continuously. There is no night, there is no setting, because there is no rising. The light is there as your Being, as your very Existence. So to be constantly centered in this light is the bath. And by “bath” is meant that everything to which one was clinging is just destroyed – not only destroyed but transformed also. It becomes light itself.

This entry has three parts: first you will realize light, then you will realize a deep cleansing of your soul, of your being, and, thirdly, you will realize the elixir, the nectar – the amrit – the immortality, the deathlessness of it, because once the ego dies you are deathless, once the karmas are washed away you are deathless, once you have entered deeper than life you are deathless.

Deeper than life, death cannot exist. Death exists parallel to life. It means the end of life. So life has two dimensions. One is just horizontal. You go from one moment of life to another moment of life, then another – A-B-C – in a sequence. Then ultimately, the Z is going to be the death. You move from A to B, from B to C, then to X-Y-Z. A is birth, Z is death, and you move from A-B-C-D horizontally. This is one movement – birth to death. Buddha says, “One who is born will have to die, because he is moving horizontally.” So death is a necessity on a horizontal plane.

But you can move vertically. From A, instead of going to B, drop below the A or go above the A. Don’t move to B. So from any life movement, you can move in two ways. You can move to another life movement; then death will be the end. Then you are progressing towards death automatically, unknowingly. You can move down or up – not horizontally but vertically. So move down or up from A, and then you move from life to light. If you move down, then you move to light. If you move up, then you move to love. This is the vertical plane.

If you move down from life, then you move to light. If you move up, then you move to love. And both give you the door to the deathless, because death only means horizontal moving. Now you are not moving horizontally. And move either way. If you can consciously go down to light, your life will become love – because once you have known the deathless you can be nothing but love.

Really, death is the enemy of love. You cannot love because there is death; you cannot love because you are fearful of death; you cannot love because you are afraid of everyone else, of the other. And all fears are basically fear of death. They all can be reduced to the fear of death. Once you know the deathless, the fear has gone. And when the mind is fearless, it is love. When the mind is fearful, it is never love. You may put on a show, you may pretend, but it is never love. With fear hate can exist, with fear jealousy can exist, with fear anything can exist, but not love. That’s why we pretend love, and love is not found. In the end jealousy is found, hate is found, fear is found – love is not found.

Why? Because you cannot love really. How can you love when there is death? How can you love unconditionally when every moment death is coming near?

Look at it in this way: you are here, your beloved or your lover is here. You are just in the ecstasy of love, and then someone says that within five minutes you are going to die. The moment this is said, that within five minutes you are going to die, love will disappear. You will forget the beloved, the lover and the poetry, and everything will just disappear. Why does it disappear? It has never been there. It was only that you were unaware of death, so you were pretending love.

Deathlessness known becomes love. Then you cannot do anything else. Then it is not that you love; rather, you become love. Love becomes your quality – not your act – your very being. So either, drop down from A; from the horizontal line drop down vertically to light: that is one way. Yoga is concerned with this dropping down. Or, from A, rise vertically to love. Bhakti – the path of devotion – is concerned with rising up. Either way you go vertically. The same will be the result.

If you can go up from A, again you find the deathless. Vertically, there is no death; only horizontally is there death. So if you find love by going up, you will find light, because entering the deathless one is bound to find light, entering the light one is bound to find the deathless. They are one! So, really, life and death are two aspects of one coin, and death is not opposite to life. It is a part. Light is opposed to death, not life, because light is immortality. Love is also opposed to death because again it is deathless.

So the problem is either to enter light by going down or by going up to enter love. This vertical journey is the journey of religion. And this sutra says:

To be centered constantly in the inner illumination and in the infinite inner nectar is the preparatory bath for the worship.

So how to enter and how to be centered? How to enter? How to find this light?

Two or three things: one, whenever you say light is, what do you mean? I say, “The room is lighted.” What do I mean? I mean that I can see. Light is never seen; only something lighted is seen. You see the walls, not the light; you see me, not the light. Something lighted is seen, never the light itself, because light is so subtle that it cannot be seen. It is not a gross phenomenon. So we only infer that light is. It is an inference, not a knowing. It is just an inference! Because I can see you, I infer, assume, that light is How can I see you without light?

No one has ever seen light – no one! And no one can ever see light. But we use the words, “I see light,” and by that we mean, “I see things which cannot be seen without light.” When you say it is dark, there is no light, what do you mean? You only mean, “Now I cannot see things.” When you cannot see things. you infer that light is not. When you can see things, you infer that light is. So light is an inference even in the outer, the outside world. So when one has to enter, when one is ready to enter inside. what do we mean by light?

If you can feel yourself, if you can see yourself, that means the light is there. This is strange, but we never think about it. The whole room is dark; you cannot say anything is there, but one thing you can say: “I am.” Why? You cannot see yourself either. The room is totally dark, nothing can be seen, but about one thing you are certain and that is your own being. No need of any proof. no need of any light. You know that you are, you feel that you are. A subtle, inner illumination must be there. We may not be aware of it, we may be unconscious of it or very dimly conscious, but it is there.

So turn your gaze inwards. Close all your senses so that there is no feeling of the outside light. Go into darkness, close your eyes, and now try to penetrate, to see inwards. First you may feel simple darkness; that is because you are not accustomed to it. Go on penetrating. Just try to look into the darkness which is within. Penetrate it, and by and by you will begin to feel many things inside. An inner illumination begins to work. It may be dim in the beginning. You will begin to see your thoughts because thoughts are inside things. They are things! You will begin to stumble upon the furniture of your mind.

Much furniture is there – many memories, many desires, many unfulfilled passions, many frustrations, many thoughts, many seed thoughts, many, many things are there. When you begin to feel them, first try to penetrate the darkness. Then a dim light begins to be there, and you begin to be aware of many things. It is like when you enter a dark room suddenly – you can’t see anything. But remain there. Be adjusted to the darkness, let your eyes be adjusted to the darkness. Eyes have to adjust, they take time. When you come from without, from a sunlit garden to your room, your eye will have to readjust themselves. Your eyes will take a little time, but it happens.

If one is constantly using his eyes only to see things which are very near – for example, if one is constantly reading – then he will become shortsighted, because so much use of short sight will fix the mechanism of the eyes. So when he wants to see a far-off star, he cannot see it because the mechanism has become fixed. Now it is not flexible. The same happens inside: because we have been looking outside continuously, for lives, the mechanism has become fixed, and we cannot look inside.

But try, make an effort – look into the darkness. Don’t be in a hurry, because the mechanism has been fixed for many lives. Eyes have forgotten completely how to look inside. You have never used them for that purpose. So look into the darkness, see the darkness, and don’t be impatient. Penetrate the darkness, go on penetrating, and within three months you will be able to see many things inside which you never thought were there. And now, for the first time, you will become aware that thoughts are just things. And when you become aware, then you can put a thought anywhere you want. If you want to throw it out, you can throw it out.

But now you cannot throw it. Just now you cannot throw out any thought, because you cannot catch it. You don’t even know that it is a thing, that it can be caught, and it can be thrown. You don’t know where thoughts are located; you don’t know from where they come. Everyone says, “I don’t want to be fearful; I don’t want to be angry.” But they cannot do anything because they don’t know even from where this anger comes, what the root is, where this anger has its reservoir, where this anger is accumulated. You don’t know the roots.

Every thought is a thing. It has an accumulated reservoir. So when one thought comes, it is just a leaf on a big tree. You cannot cut it and throw it – another leaf will come out. Roots are there, the tree is there. When you begin to be aware even dimly that thoughts are there, desires are there – anger, passion, lust – everything is there, don’t begin to fight. Just watch, because by watching you will become more aware, and by fighting you will never become aware. So don’t fight – watch! “Watch” is the word, the mantra. Watch constantly, and the more you watch, the more you will begin to feel that more light is there. Light is there; only your eyes have to be adjusted. So watch!

By watching, eyes will become adjusted. And when more light is there and everything becomes clear, when there is no dark spot, then you become master of your mind. You can put anything out; you can rearrange everything. And once you become master of your mind, then you will become aware from where this light is coming, what the source is. The sun is not there; it is without. You have not even brought in a candle, but everything has become illuminated. From where is this light coming? First you will become aware of things which are lighted, then you will become master of the things of your mind, and then you will begin to be aware of where this light is coming from, of what the source is. You will begin to be aware of a flower blooming. Then you will begin to be aware of where this light is coming from. Then you can know the sun.

Only secondarily will you have to proceed from a lighted object towards the source of the light. Again, light is not seen; again, you will see the sun. So first you will begin to feel the content of the mind. Then, more and more, the mind will become clear. Then you will be aware of where this light is coming from. Just in the center of the mind is the source. Then enter the source! Now you can forget the mind – you are the master. You can just say to the mind, “Stop!” and the mind will stop.

Awareness is needed for the mastery. Never try the reverse: never try to be the master first and then to be aware. That never happens, that cannot happen. That is not possible. Be aware, and the mastery happens. You become the master. Then go to the source, then enter the source, from where this light is coming. Go! Enter the illumination! That entering into the illumination is the “bath”. You have become master of the mind. Now you will become master of life itself; now you will become master of consciousness itself. And once bathed in this illumination, in this source of light, you will be able to see yourself in your eternity. In this moment, all the past and all the future will be there. This moment is eternal. You are so pure that the whole time gathers in you. The past purified creates a purified future – and this moment becomes eternal.

Watch, be aware, observe deeply the contents of the mind. Then you will become aware of the source; then enter the source. It is fearful, because whatsoever you have known as yourself will die. This bath is a death – a death of all that you have known yourself to be. The identity, the ego, the personality, everything will die. because the personality, the identity, the ego, they are the dirt – the accumulated dirt around your being. Only being will remain without name and form. And this sutra says this is the preparatory bath. Only now can you enter, and only up to here do you have to make efforts. The moment you are purified, the moment you have gone through this bath, the moment the karmas have dissolved. now you need not make any effort.

From this point, God becomes a gravitation. Now you enter the field of grace. It is the same like the gravitation on the earth, but you have to enter the field. So for spaceships we have tb make one basic arrangement: they must be thrown out of the grip of the earth, out of the gravitation field. Two hundred miles above the earth, all around, is the field. If you are under the field, you will be pulled back. If you go beyond two hundred miles, then the earth cannot do anything.

The Divine cannot pull you unless you are totally pure, unless you yourself become light. Then with the same velocity, you enter the Divine. So this entering the light is the last effort. Once you are purified you begin to gravitate. Now you need not go: you are being pulled. This gravitation is known as grace: the gravitation to the Divine is grace. Grace is not really a help – it is not! It is just a law. God is not grace-ful only to some, it is not so, He is not partial; the earth is not gravitational only for some – the moment you enter the field, the law begins to work.

So don’t say that God is grace-full, don’t say that God is helpful, don’t say that He has compassion. It is not right. God means “the Law of Grace”. The law begins to work. Once you enter the field, the law begins to work. Once you begin to be light yourself, the law begins to work – and you begin to gravitate.

I said that light is the foundation of life. With this statement even science can agree. Science ends on this point; there is no beyond for science. Religion still has a beyond because religion says that even beyond light there is Existence.

Now another thing: light exists, so light has two qualities – being the light and also existence. Still, light is not the ultimate one because it has two qualities – light and existence. Religion says that existence can be without light, but light cannot be without existence. So one step more: religion says, “God is pure Existence.” So, really, for religious people, this word or this sentence that “God is”, is fallacious, because “God” and “is” both mean the same thing.

A table is, but to say “God is” is not good. Man is because man may not be, so man and is-ness are two things conjoined. They can be disjoined. But “God is” is not right because God means is-ness. So it is tautological, repetitive. To say, “God is” is as absurd as someone saying, “Is is” or “God God”. “God is” means the same as “God God” or “Is is”. They are meaningless, absurd! Is-ness is God. So religion reduces it still more and says that when you enter light, then you will enter the Is-ness, Existence, That. So light is just the aura of That. When you enter light, you enter the aura. But the moment you enter the aura you will be pulled. and there will be no time gap. There is no time gap!

Now another thing: I said that light moves with the highest velocity – 186,000 miles in one second. in one second. in one minute, in one hour, in one year, how much light moves! The unit with which physics measures its movement is the light year. A light year means the movement of light in one year at this velocity. This is still a time movement. It is very fast, but yet light takes time to move. So as I said, light needs no medium, light needs no vehicle, light needs no borrowed energy – but still light needs time. So for religion, light still needs something without which it cannot move. So light is still dependent on time.

Religion says we have to go even deeper in order to find something which need not have even this dependence – time. So for us it looks meaningless. How can light move without any medium? But now science says it moves. It is so. Religion says, “Don’t be disturbed. How can God be without time?” He is, and God moves without time, consciousness moves without time.

Light has the highest velocity as far as science has measured, but in a way, it is the highest because Existence cannot be said to have more velocity. Really, it moves without time. So there is no question of velocity. We cannot say how much it moves in one second. The movement is absolutely absolute. There is no time gap. So when one enters this illumination, one is pulled. Even the word “pulled” takes time to be asserted, but the very phenomenon of being pulled takes no time.

When I say “pulled”, it takes time, time is lost. But really, when one enters the illumination, even this much time is not needed. There is no time gap. You are pulled, and beyond this light is God, the temple. This light only bathes you, purifies you, just like a fire. You become purified. And the moment you are purified – the entrance, the explosion.

With light you become deathless, but you still feel. You feel that now you have entered immortality. But when entering into That, the Is-ness, you are not even aware of deathlessness. Life and death are meaningless now – only Being is. You are, without any conditions. That Being is the Ultimate for religion.

Light is the field, mind is around the field, and we are around the mind, we live outside the mind. So one has to enter the mind, then light, and then the Divine. But we just go on round and round, outside the mind. This state of always being outside the home has become a fixed habit. We have forgotten that we are living on the verandah. It is easy: the verandah is easy for moving outside. That’s why we have become fixed there – it is easy. We can move outside anytime. and because our mind and our desires are moving outside, we live on the verandah. So at any moment, at any opportunity to move, we can run. We have forgotten that there is a home, and this running outside is just being a beggar. Entering the house means you will have to turn your eyes around completely, and you will have to use your eyes in a new way, and you will have to pass a dark night – only because of a fixed habit.

Christian mystics have talked much about “the dark night of the soul”. This is the dark night – because your eyes are so fixed. As I said, someone becomes shortsighted, someone else becomes farsighted. If he goes on looking far, then he cannot look near. If he goes on looking near, then he cannot look far. Eyes become fixed. They are mechanical; they lose the flexibility. Just as someone becomes nearsighted and someone farsighted, we have become “outsighted”. “Insightedness” will have to be developed.

You must have heard the word “insight”, but you might not have heard the word “outsighted”. You know the word “insight”, but it is meaningless unless you understand the word “outsight”. We have become outsighted, fixed; the insight has to be developed. So whenever you find time, close your eyes, close your mind to the outside, and try to penetrate in. At first you will be in a deep dark night. Nothing will be there except darkness. Don’t be impatient. Wait and watch, and by and by darkness will become less, and you will be able to feel many inner phenomena. And only when you become aware of the inner world, then only can you become aware of the source from where this light is coming. Then enter the source. This the Upanishads call “the bath”.

How stupid the human mind is! We ritualize everything, and the significance is lost. Then only stupid rituals remain. So we take a bath when we go to the temple. Neither the temple is there nor the bath. The temple is inside and the bath also. And this bath, the Upanishads say, is the bath in inner illumination.

Light is really the bridge between the Divine and the world. The Divine creates the world through creating light. Light is the first creation, and then light condenses and matter happens; then light grows, I say light grows, and life happens; then life grows, and love happens. […]

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.1, Discourse #11

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Encountering the Unconscious – Osho

Considering the example of sensual instinct, kindly explain what are the practical ways to encounter the unconscious mind, and how can one know that one has become free from it?

The unconscious is not really unconscious. Rather, it is only less conscious. So the difference between conscious and unconscious is not of polar opposites, but of degrees. Unconscious and conscious are related, joined; they are not two. But our ways of thinking are based on a particular false system of logic which divides everything into polar opposites.

Reality is never divided like that; only logic is divided. Our logic says either yes or no; our logic says either light or darkness – and there is nothing in between as far as logic goes. But life is neither white nor black. It is, rather, a great expanse of grey. One extreme becomes white, another extreme becomes black, and life is a great expanse of grey, degrees of grey. But for logic white and black are realities and there is nothing in between – but life is always in between these two. So, really, every problem should be understood not as a logical problem, but as a life problem – only then can you do something with it. If you are too fixed with this false logic, then you will never be able to solve any problem.

Aristotle has proved to be one of the greatest menaces, blocks to the human mind, because he created a system – which became dominant all over the world – that divides everything into two opposites. Really, this is a strange fact. We have nothing for the in between reality – not even words.

De Bono, a modern non-Aristotelian logician, has created a new word – “po”. He says that we have only two words, “yes” or “no”, and there is no neutral word. “Yes” is one opposite, “no” is another – there is no neutral word. So he has coined a new word – “po”. “Po” means “I am neither for nor against.” If you say something and I say “po” it means, “I have heard you I am neither for nor against. I am not making any judgment.” Or, to say “po” means: “Perhaps you are right, perhaps you are wrong. Both are possible.” Or the use of the word “po” means: “This is also one point of view. I need not be on the ‘yes’ side or the ‘no’. It is not a compulsion.”

De Bono has derived this word from words like hyPOthesis or POtentiality. This “po” is a neutral word, not loaded with any judgment, condemnation or appreciation. Just use the word “po” and you will feel the difference. You are not taking any standpoint in the polar opposites.

So when I say “conscious” and “unconscious”, I don’t mean the Freudian opposition. For Freud, conscious is conscious and unconscious is unconscious. The difference is that of white and black, yes and no, life and death. When I say “unconscious” I mean “less conscious”. When I say “conscious” I mean “less unconscious”. They overlap each other.

So what to do to encounter the unconscious? As far as Freud is concerned the encounter is impossible. Because it is unconscious, how can you encounter it? The question means the same as if someone says, “How to see in darkness?” Mm? The question is irrelevant, meaningless. If you put it in this way, “How to see in darkness?” and if I say, “With light,” then the question has not been answered at all because you ask, “How to see in darkness?” and if there is light then there is no darkness – you are seeing light.

So, really, in darkness no one can see. When we say “darkness” we mean that now seeing is not possible. What do you mean when you say “darkness”? You mean that now seeing is not possible. What do you mean when you say “light”? You mean that now things can be seen. Really, you have never seen light: you have only seen light reflected in things which you can see. You have never seen light itself – no one can see it. We see only things, not light, and because things are seen, we assume, infer, that light is there.

You have not seen darkness; no one has seen it. Really, darkness is just an inference. Because nothing is seen, you say there is darkness. So when someone asks, “How to see in darkness?” the words look meaningful, but they are not. Language is very deceptive, and unless one becomes careful in using language one will never be able to solve any problem. Ninety-nine percent of problems are just linguistic problems, but if you don’t know how to penetrate the garb of language you will never be able to tackle the real problem.

If you ask Freud how to encounter the unconscious, he will say, “It is nonsense; you cannot encounter it. If you encounter it, it will become conscious, because encountering is a conscious phenomenon.” But if you ask me how to encounter the unconscious, I will say, “Yes, there are ways to encounter it” – because for me, the first thing to be noted is that “unconscious” means simply “less conscious”. So if you grow more conscious, you can encounter it – so it depends.

Secondly, unconscious and conscious are not fixed boundaries. They change every moment – just like the retina of the eye. It is changing constantly. If there is more light, it is narrowed down. If there is less light, then it widens. It is constantly making an equilibrium with the light outside. So your eye is not really a fixed thing; it is constantly changing. Just like that is your consciousness. Really, to understand the phenomenon of consciousness by the analogy of the eye is very relevant, because consciousness is the inner eye, the eye of the soul. So just like your eye, your consciousness is constantly expanding or shrinking. It depends.

For example, if you are angry, you become more unconscious. The unconscious is now more spread, and only a very minor part of you remains conscious. Sometimes even that part is not there either – you become completely unconscious. But in a sudden accident: you are on the road and suddenly you feel that an accident is going to be there and you are on the verge of death – you suddenly become conscious and there is no unconscious at all. The whole mind is conscious. And this change is continuously taking place.

So when I say conscious and unconscious, I don’t mean any fixed boundaries. There are none, there are no fixed boundaries. It is a fluctuating phenomenon. It depends on you to be less conscious or more conscious. You can create consciousness; you can train and discipline yourself for more consciousness or for less consciousness. If you train yourself for less consciousness, you will never be able to encounter the unconscious. Really, you will even become incapable of encountering the conscious.

When someone has taken some intoxicant, he is training his mind to be totally unconscious. When you go into sleep, or if you can be hypnotized, or if you can auto hypnotize yourself, then you lose consciousness. There are many tricks, and many of those tricks which help you to be more unconscious are even known as religious practices. If you do any monotonous, repetitive thing – for example, if you go on continuously saying “Ram-Ram-Ram-ram”, in a very monotonous tone, you will become less conscious. And this constant repetition of “Ram-Ram-Ram”, in a monotonous tone, will be just auto-hypnotic. You will go to sleep: it is good for sleep.

If you can create monotony then you will be less conscious, because a bored mind cannot remain conscious. The boredom is too much, and the mind would like to go to sleep.

We know, every mother knows, how to put a child to sleep. A lullaby does nothing but create boredom. Every mother knows how to put a child to sleep. With a lullaby – a constant repetition of certain words – the child is bored, so he goes into sleep. This lullaby can be created by movement, by anything which is monotonous – by anything! Just move the child monotonously, rotate the child monotonously, and he will go to sleep because he feels bored. Even if you put the child’s head near your heart he will go to sleep, because your heartbeat is a very boring thing. So put the child near your heart, and he will feel bored because of the constant repetition of the heartbeat. The child knows it very well because for nine months continuously he has heard it. Even old persons can use the “tick-tick” of a clock for going into sleep, and the reason is only the resemblance to the heartbeat. So if you feel that sleep is not coming, just concentrate on your clock and feel the beat, and soon you will drop into sleep.

You can create unconsciousness by creating boredom. By taking any intoxicant, by taking any drug, any sedative, any tranquillizer, you can create unconsciousness. Consciousness also can be created, but then quite different methods have to be used.

Sufi mystics use whirling dances. With such vigorous whirling you cannot sleep. It is impossible. How can you fall asleep when dancing? Someone seeing your dance may go to sleep; for him it may become a boring thing – but you cannot go. So Sufis use dance to create more activity inside, more vitality, so that consciousness spreads. And these dances are not really dances. They look like dances. The Sufi who is doing the dance is constantly remembering every movement of the body. No movement should be done unconsciously. Even if a hand is raised, then this hand must be raised with full consciousness that you are raising the hand – now the hand is raised; now you are dropping it again. No movement should be allowed unconsciously. You are whirling around, dancing vigorously; no movement is to be made unconsciously. Every movement must be done consciously, with full alertness.

Then suddenly the unconscious drops, and with three months of dancing continuously, for hours, you encounter the unconscious. You penetrate deep, deep, deep, and suddenly you become aware of everything that is inside. That is what I mean by encountering the unconscious. Nothing remains which is not in clear vision. Your totality, all your instincts, all your suppressions, your whole biological structure, everything – not only of this life, but of all lives – suddenly is revealed. You are thrown into a new world which was hidden or, rather, to which you were not alert. It was there, but you were asleep – or your consciousness was so narrowed down that it escaped.

Your consciousness is just like a torch – narrowed. You enter darkness with a torch; you have a light, but it is a narrow, focused light. You can see something, but all else remains in darkness. When I say that nothing unconscious remains, I mean unfocused consciousness – unfocused. A focused consciousness will always choose something to see and choose many things not to see; it is a choice. So I use the similarity: just like a torch, narrowed down. One point will become very clear, but everything else will be in darkness. This is what we ordinarily do through concentration.

The more you concentrate, the less you will be able to encounter the unconscious. You will be able to know something very definitely at the cost of not knowing many things. That’s why experts, by and by, become just ignorant – ignorant of the whole world: because they have narrowed down their minds to a particular thing in order to know more about it. So it has been said that an expert is a person who knows more and more about less and less. In the end, only a point remains focused which he knows at the cost of ignoring everything else.

This is how concentration works. So through concentration you can never encounter the unconscious. You can encounter the unconscious only with meditation – and this is the difference between concentration and meditation. Meditation means your mind working not as a torch but like a flame: everything is enlightened around it – everything. It is not narrowed down; the light is diffused. It is not moving in one direction – it is moving in all directions simultaneously so the whole is enlightened.

How to do it? I said Sufis use dance as an active meditation and then they can encounter the unconscious. Zen monks in Japan use absurd problems to encounter it. You face some problem which cannot be solved – which cannot be solved at all! Howsoever you try, the problem is such that it cannot be solved. They call such problems “koans” – absurd problems.

For example, they will say to some seeker, “Find out what your original face is.” And by original face they mean the face you had before you were born, or the face you will have after you die – the original face. They will say, “Find out how your original face looks.” How can you find it out? One has to meditate on it. The problem is such that you cannot solve it by intellect, by reason. You have to ponder over it, meditate over it, go on meditating and searching: “What is my original face?” And the teacher will be there with his staff, and he will look around to see if someone is going into sleep. Then the teacher’s staff will be on your head. You cannot sleep; sleep is not allowed at all. You have to be constantly awake.

So a Zen teacher is a hard taskmaster. You have to meditate before him, and he will not allow you to drop into sleep – because the moment when you are dropping into sleep is the moment to encounter the unconscious. If you can remain out of sleep, then the unconscious will be revealed – because that is the line. The very line from where you drop into sleep is the line where you can enter into the unconscious.

You can try this. You have been sleeping every day, but you have not encountered sleep yet. You have not seen it – what it is, how it comes, how you drop into it. You have not known anything about it. You have been dropping into it daily, coming out of it, but you have not felt the moment when sleep comes on the mind – what happens. So try this, and with three months’ effort, suddenly, one day, you will enter sleep knowingly: drop on your bed, close your eyes, and then remember, remember that sleep is coming and “I am to remain awake when the sleep comes.” It is very arduous, but it happens. One day it will not happen, one week it will not happen. Persist every day, constantly remembering that sleep is coming and, “I am not to allow it without knowing. I must be aware when sleep enters. I must go on feeling how sleep takes over, what it is.”

And one day, suddenly, sleep is there and you are still awake. That very moment you become aware of your unconscious also. And once you become aware of your unconscious you will never be asleep again in the old way. Sleep will be there, but you will be awake simultaneously. A center in you will go on knowing. All around will be sleep, and a center will go on knowing. When this center knows dreams become impossible. And when dreams become impossible, daydreams also become impossible. Then you are asleep in a different sense, and then you will be awake in the morning in a different sense. That different quality comes by the encounter.

But this may look difficult, so I suggest to you a simpler exercise to encounter the unconscious. Close the doors of your room and put a big mirror just in front of you. The room must be dark. And then put a small flame by the side of the mirror in such a way that it is not directly reflected in it. Just your face is reflected in the mirror, not the flame. Then constantly stare into your own eyes in the mirror. Do not blink. This is a forty-minute experiment, and within two or three days you will be able to keep your eyes unblinking.

Even if tears come, let them come, but persist in not blinking and go on staring constantly into your eyes. Do not change the stare. Go on staring into the eyes, your own, and within two or three days you will become aware of a very strange phenomenon. Your face will begin to take new shapes. You may even be scared. The face in the mirror will begin to change. Sometimes a very different face will be there which you have never known as yours.

But, really, all these faces belong to you. Now the subconscious mind is beginning to explode. These faces, these masks, are yours. Sometimes even a face that belongs to a past life may come in. After one week of constant staring for forty minutes, your face will become a flux, just a film-like flux. Many faces will be coming and going constantly. After three weeks, you will not be able to remember which is your face. You will not be able to remember your own face, because you have seen so many faces coming and going.

If you continue, then any day, after three weeks, the most strange thing happens: suddenly there is no face in the mirror. The mirror is vacant, you are staring into emptiness. There is no face at all. This is the moment: close your eyes and encounter the unconscious. When there is no face in the mirror, just close the eyes – this is the most significant moment – close the eyes, look inside, and you will face the unconscious. You will be naked – completely naked, as you are. All deceptions will fall.

This is the reality, but the society has created many, many layers in order that you will not be aware of it. Once you know yourself in your nakedness, your total nakedness, you begin to be a different person. Then you cannot deceive yourself. Then you know what you are. And unless you know what you are you can never become transformed, because any transformation becomes possible only in this naked reality: this naked reality is potential for any transformation. No deception can be transformed. Your original face is now here and you can transform it. And, really, just a will to transform it will affect the transformation.

But you cannot become transformed! You cannot transform your false faces. You can change them, but you cannot transform them: by “change” I mean you can replace them with another false face. A thief can become a monk, a criminal can become a saint. It is very easy to change, to replace the masks, the faces. These are not transformations at all.

Transformation means becoming that which you really are. So the moment you face the unconscious, encounter the unconscious, you are face to face with your reality, with your authentic being.

The false societal being is not there, your name is not there, your form is not there, your face is not there. The naked forces of nature are there, and with these naked forces any transformation is possible – and by just willing it! Nothing is to be done. You just will, and things begin to happen. If you face yourself in this nakedness, just will whatsoever you like, and it will be.

In the Bible it is said: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” In the Koran it is said: “God said, ‘Let there be the world,’ and there was the world.” Really, these are parables – parables of the willpower which is hidden in you. When you encounter your naked reality, the basic, elemental forces, you become a creator, a god. Just say, utter a word, and it happens. Say, “Let there be light,” and there will be light. Before the encounter, if you are trying to transform darkness into light it is not possible. So this encounter is basic, foundational, for any religious happening.

Many, many methods have been invented. There are sudden methods, there are gradual methods. I have told you about a gradual method. There are sudden methods, but with a sudden method it is always very difficult – because with a sudden method it can happen that you may simply die. With a sudden method it can happen that you may suddenly go mad – because the phenomenon is so sudden that you cannot conceive of it. You just drop, shattered.

This happened in the Gita. Arjuna is forcing Krishna to reveal his cosmic form. Krishna goes on talking about other things, but Arjuna is persistent and he says, “I must see. I cannot believe unless I see. If you are really a god, then reveal to me your cosmic from!” Krishna reveals it, but it is so sudden, and Arjuna is not prepared at all. He begins to cry and says to Krishna, “Close it! Close it! I am scared to death!”

So if you come to it through some sudden method, it is dangerous. Sudden methods are there, but they can be practiced only in a group – in a group where others can help you. Really, ashrams were created for these sudden methods because they cannot be practiced alone. A group is needed, adepts are needed, and a constant vigilance is needed, because sometimes you may drop unconscious for months continuously. Then if there is no one who knows what to do, you may be taken for dead. You may be buried or burnt. Many times, Ramakrishna happened to go into deep Samadhi. For six days or for two weeks continuously he had to be forcefully spoon-fed because he was just as if unconscious. A group is needed for sudden methods, and a teacher becomes an absolute necessity.

Sudden methods dropped from Indian practices because of Buddha, Mahavir and Shankaracharya because they insisted that monks should travel continuously. They didn’t allow monks to be in ashrams. They were not to remain anywhere for more than three days. There was a need for this because at the time of Mahavir and Buddha, ashrams became just exploitation centers; they became just big businesses. So Mahavir and Buddha both insisted that a sannyasin shouldn’t remain anywhere more than three days. And three days is a very psychological limit, because in order to be attuned with some place or with some people you need more than three days.

In a new house, you cannot feel at ease unless three days have passed. This is a psychological attuning time. If you remain in a house for more than three days, then the house begins to look as if it is yours. So a sannyasin must not remain anywhere more than three days. Buddha and Mahavir insisted. But because of their insistence, ashrams were destroyed and school methods dropped out of practice – because a wandering monk cannot practice sudden methods. He may be in a village, but no one may know anything about it, and if he practices a sudden method and the happening happens, then he will be in danger: he will have to die.

So Mahavir, Buddha and, later on, Shankaracharya, all these three, insisted that monks go on wandering continuously. They must not remain in one place; they should be homeless wanderers. So it was good in one way, and it proved bad in another. It proved good because establishments were destroyed, but it proved bad also because with establishments certain very, very significant practices, methods, just went into oblivion.

Sudden methods require the constant vigilance of a group. A teacher becomes a necessity. So Buddha could say, “You can know even without me,” but a Patanjali cannot say that. Krishnamurti can say, “No teacher is needed,” but a Gurdjieff cannot say that. And the real reason for these differences is their methods: Gurdjieff has school methods and Krishnamurti belongs to the tradition of wanderers, no school methods, so no teacher is needed.

With gradual methods you can proceed alone because there is no danger. You have to proceed inch by inch, and as far as a one-inch happening is concerned, you can control it yourself. But if you have to take a jump with no steps in between, then you will need someone who knows where you are going to fall, who knows what can happen. A teacher is not really needed to show you the methods; he is needed really, afterwards when the method has done something and you have moved into the unknown.

So there are sudden methods, but I will not talk about them. I have given you one gradual method, and there are many. I will not talk about the sudden methods because it is dangerous to talk about them. If someone is interested, then he can be led – but talking is impossible. That’s why school teaching has always insisted that nothing should be written – because once you write something it becomes public and anyone can do it. Anyone can become just a victim of his own curiosity, and then no help will be coming. So even when something is written about sudden practices, a basic link is always missing.

So those who begin practices through scriptures are always in danger, and many times it happens that they just go mad – because a missing link is always bound to be there, and that missing link is always supplied by word of mouth from the teacher to the disciple. And it is a private and secret process, the missing link. because that is the key. No scripture is really complete and no scripture can ever be really complete, because those who know can never write a thing completely. Something must remain hidden, as a key, so no one can use it. You can read about it, you can comment on it, you can write a thesis upon it, but you cannot practice it because a certain key is not given in the scripture itself. Or, if it is given, it is given in such a way that you cannot decode it; the technique to decode it is not given in it.

So nothing about sudden practices – but you can do something gradually. And this mirror meditation is a very powerful method – very powerful – to know one’s own abyss and to know one’s own naked reality. And once you have known it, you become the master. Then just say something, and things begin to take shape. In that encounter, if you say, “I must die this moment,” you will die that very moment. If you say, “I must become a Buddha this very moment,” you will become a Buddha that very moment. Time is not required at all – just a will.

You may begin to think that then it is very easy, but it is a difficult problem. First, to reach it is difficult, though not so difficult, but to will in that moment is very difficult. Such a vital silence takes you over, you cannot even think. Your mind cannot even move. You are in such awe, everything stops – even breathing. A very still moment, totally silent, and will becomes impossible. So one has to train oneself how to will in that still moment – how to will without words, how to will without thoughts. That is possible, but then one has to practice for it.

You are looking at a flower: look at the flower, feel the beauty of it – but don’t use the word “beautiful”, not even in the mind. Look at it, let it be absorbed in you, reach to it, but don’t use words. Feel the beauty of it, but don’t say, “It is beautiful,” not even in the mind. Don’t verbalize, and gradually you will become capable of feeling a flower as beautiful without using the word.

Really, it is not difficult: it is natural. You feel first; then the word comes. But we are so habituated with words that there is no gap. The feeling is there, and suddenly, you have not even felt, and the word comes. So create a gap. Just feel the beauty of it, but don’t use the word.

If you can dissociate words from feeling, then you can dissociate even feeling from Existence. Then let the flower be there and you be there as two presences, but don’t allow the feeling to come in. Don’t even feel now that the flower is beautiful. Don’t feel! Let the flower be there and you be there arrowed in a deep embrace without any ripple of feeling. Then you will feel beauty without feeling. Really, then you will be the beauty of the flower. It will not be a feeling; you will be the flower. Then you have existentially felt something. When you can do this, you can will. When everything is lost – thought, words, feeling – then you can will existentially.

To help this will, many things have been used. One is that the seeker must constantly go on thinking, “When the thing comes, when that happening happens, what am I going to be?” The sutras of the Upanishads like “Aham brahmasmi” – I am the Brahman – are not meant as literal statements. These sutras are not meant as statements, they are not meant as philosophical theories, they are meant to engrave a deep will in the very cells of your being. So when that moment comes, you don’t need your mind to tell you, “I am the Brahman.” Your body begins to feel it, your cells begin to feel it, your every fiber begins to feel it: “Aham brahmasmi.” And this feeling does not need to be created by you. It will have gone deep into your existence. Then suddenly when you encounter the unconscious and the moment of will has come, and you can become a creator – your whole existence begins to vibrate “Aham brahmasmi.” And the moment your existence begins to vibrate “Aham brahmasmi,” you become a Brahma – you become! Whatsoever you can feel, you become.

This should not be known as metaphysics – it is not! It is an experience. So you can know it only through experiencing. Do not decide whether it is right or wrong; do not think in terms of yes and no. Just say, “Po – okay,” and make some effort. Just say, “Okay! It may be.” Don’t decide – because we are very hasty deciders. Someone will say, “No, it is not possible.” Really, he is saying. “I am not going to try”; he is not saying it is not possible. He is deceiving himself. He is saying, “I am not going to try,” and because of this “I am not going to try”, how can it be possible? He is rationalizing for himself.

Someone else says, “Yes, it is possible. It has happened to many. It has happened to my guru, to my teacher, it has happened to this one and that.” He is also not going to try because he is making it a trivial fact: “It has happened to many, so it is not such a thing for which one has to try!” He feels, “It can happen to me also.” No, don’t say yes or no. Just take it as an experiment, a hypothesis, to be worked out. Religion is not a given thing; one has to create it in oneself. It is not something which is given to you or which can be given; it is something which you have to uncover in yourself.

So don’t decide unless you experience, don’t decide unless you know. Never decide beforehand. Otherwise, you can go on continuously listening to things, thinking about them, and doing nothing – because thinking is not doing; thinking is just an escape from doing.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.1 #6, Q1

For a related post see A Still Mind: The Door to the Divine.

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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A Still Mind: The Door to the Divine – Osho

Nishal-gyanam asanam.

Non-wavering knowing is asana – the posture.

Man is neither a body, nor a mind alone – he is both. Even to say that he is both is wrong in a way because body and mind are separate only as two words. Existence is one. Body is nothing but the outermost core of your consciousness, the grossest expression of consciousness. And consciousness, on the other hand, is nothing more than the subtlest body, the most refined part of the body. You exist in between.

These are not two things, but two ends of one thing. So whenever knowing becomes non-wavering, body is also affected; non-wavering knowing creates a non-wavering body. But the vice versa is not true. You can impose non-wavering on the body, but the knowing will not become non-wavering. It can help – a very little. It can be helpful, but not much.

Body posture became very important because we are body oriented. Even those who say that we are not bodies think in terms of body. Even those who say, “We are not bodies,” their thinking, their mind, remains tethered to the body. Even they begin with body postures. Asana means giving your body a posture in which the body becomes non-wavering, still. It is supposed that if the body is still, then the mind will go into stillness.

This is not true – the contrary is true! If the mind becomes still, then the body becomes still. And then a very mysterious phenomenon happens: if the mind is still, you can go on dancing but your body will remain still. And if your mind is not still, you can be just dead but still the body will be wavering, because the mind wavering creates subtle vibrations which come to the body and the body goes on wavering inside. Try it. You can sit just like a statue – dead, stonelike. Close your eyes and feel. Outwardly, no one can say that your body is wavering, but inwardly you will know that it is. A subtle trembling is there. Even if it cannot be detected from the outside, you can feel it from the inside.

If your mind is totally still, then even if you are dancing you will feel from inside that the body is still. A Buddha is still even when he is walking, and a non-Buddha is not still even when he is dead. The vibrations come from your center, they originate from you, and then they spread towards the body. The body is not the originator, it is not the source, so you cannot stop them from the periphery. You can impose, you can practice, but inside there will be turmoil – and this imposing will create more conflict than stillness.

So this sutra says that to practice meditation, posture – a still posture – is needed. But what do we mean by a posture? This sutra says that “a non-wavering knowing” is the posture. If the mind is non-wavering, then you are in the right posture. In that right posture everything can happen.

So don’t deceive yourself by creating bodily imitations. You can create them; that is very easy. On the circumference, on the periphery, to impose stillness is very easy. But that is not your stillness. You remain in turmoil, you remain wavering. From the center the waves must not come.

What is this non-wavering knowledge? It is one of the deepest secrets. To understand it we will have to go deep into the very construction of mind, so let us begin.

Mind has many types of thoughts. Every thought is a wavering, every thought is a wave. If there are no thoughts, then the mind will be non-wavering. A single thought, and you have trembled. A single thought, and you are not still. And a single thought is not a single thought: it is a very complex phenomenon. A single thought is created by many waves; a single word even is created by many waves. So only when many waves are there in the mind is a single word created, and a single thought has many words. Thousands and thousands of ripples create one thought.

Thought is the outermost, but waves have preceded. You become aware only when waves become thoughts because your awareness is so gross. You cannot be aware when waves are pure waves still in the formation of becoming a thought. The more you will become aware, the more you will feel that thought has many layers. Thought form is the last. Before thought there are seed waves which create the thought, and before the seed waves there are still deeper roots which create seeds.

Seeds create thought. At least three layers are very easily visible for a conscious mind. But we are not conscious: we are asleep. So we become aware only when waves take the grossest form – thought. As far as we know, thought seems to be the most subtle thing. It is not. Thought really has become a thing. When there are pure waves, you cannot even detect what is going to happen, what thought is going to be created in you. So we become aware only when waves become thought.

A single thought implies thousands of waves, so we can conceive how much we are wavering – continuous thinking, not a single moment of no thought, one thought followed by another constantly, no gap. So we are really a wavering, a trembling phenomenon. Soren Kierkegaard has said that man is a trembling – just a trembling and nothing else. And he is right in a way. As far as we are concerned, man is a trembling. A Buddha may not be, but then Buddha is not a man.

This thought process is the process of wavering. So non-wavering means a no-thought state of mind. Really, the sutra says “non-wavering knowing” – mind is not even mentioned. So first, three layers of mind have to be distinctly understood.

One is the conscious mind, and one type of thought belongs to the conscious level. These thoughts are the least important. They constitute moment-to-moment reactions, reflexes. You are on the road and a snake passes and you jump. The snake gives you a stimulus and you respond. So one type of thought is like this: stimulus outside and a response from the periphery. Really, you don’t think: you just act. A snake is there: you act; you become aware and you act. You don’t go inside to ask what to do. The house is on fire and you run. This is a peripheral reaction.

So one type of thought is the moment-to-moment reflex type. Even a Buddha has to react in this way. This is natural; nothing is wrong with it. If you react moment-to-moment, then nothing is wrong with the mind – but that is not the only layer.

Then there is a second layer. This second layer is the subconscious. Religions call it “conscience.” Really, this second layer is created by the society; it is a society in you. Society penetrates everyone, because society cannot control you unless it penetrates you; so it becomes a part of you. The upbringing, the education, the parents, the teachers – what are they doing? They are doing one thing: they are creating the subconscious mind. They are giving you thoughts. structures, ideals, values. These thoughts belong to the second layer They are helpful, they have their utility, but they are harmful also. They are instruments to move easily, conveniently in the society, but they are barriers also.

This second layer has to be understood more. This second layer consists of ideas within, fixed ideas, fixations. So whenever your peripheral mind is working moment-to-moment, it is not pure. Only a child is pure, innocent – he is working moment-to-moment. There is no subconscious to interfere.

You are not working moment-to-moment. The subconscious is constantly interfering. It is giving you choice: what to choose, what not to choose. Every moment it is making you narrow. You become just unaware of many things because of the subconscious. It will not allow you to be aware of everything. And about many things you become too much aware because this subconscious mind forces you constantly to be aware of them.

Every society creates a different type of subconscious, so, really, one’s being a Hindu or a Christian or a Jain belongs to the subconscious mind. As far as the peripheral mind is concerned, everyone reacts in the same way; it is natural. But the subconscious mind is not natural; it is a social product. So we behave in different ways. You see a church. A Hindu can pass without even becoming aware that there is a church. He need not be aware. But a Christian cannot pass without becoming aware that there is a church. He may even be anti-Christian – consciously he may even be like Bertrand Russell who can write a book called Why I am not a Christian – but he will become aware. The subconscious is working there.

A Brahmin, he can intellectually understand that the problem of untouchability is just violent, cruel, and intellectually he can think that it is not good, but this is the conscious mind. The subconscious is working there. If you ask him to marry a Sudra girl, somewhere deeply he is struck. He cannot conceive of it. Even to eat with an untouchable becomes difficult. Intellectually he understands nothing is wrong in it, but the subconscious goes on projecting and pushing. And he cannot react naturally: the subconscious distorts, perverts.

This subconscious is supplying you constantly with many ideas which you think are your own. They are not. They have been fed to you just like a computer is fed. You can get information out of a computer only if you have previously fed it. The same is the case with man also, with mind also. Whatsoever you are getting out is just because of what has been fed in before. Everything has been fed in. This is what we mean by education, the so-called education: feeding information. So it is ready in the unconscious every moment. It is so ready, really, that even when you don’t need it, it comes up. It constantly overfloods your mind, and it becomes a constant wavering, a constant trembling. This subconscious mind is the root cause of so many social evils.

Really, the world could be one if there were no subconscious mind. Then there would be no distinction between a Hindu and a Mohammedan. The distinction is of the subconscious feeding, and it goes so deep that you cannot even feel how it works. You cannot go behind it. It goes so deep that you always remain in front and you feel helpless. But the society is also helpless. It is a substitute – a poor substitute, but a substitute. Unless man becomes totally aware, the society cannot dispense with the subconscious.

For example, if a man becomes totally aware, he cannot be a thief. But man, as he is, is not aware at all, so society has to create a substitute for awareness: it must put a strong suggestion inside that theft is bad, evil, sin, that you must not be a thief. This idea must be put deep in the subconscious so that when you begin to think of theft the subconscious comes up and says, “No. this is sin,” and you are stopped. This is a social substitute for awareness – and unless man comes to awareness the society cannot dispense with the subconscious, because it has to give you some rules. Unless you are so aware that rules are not needed at all, the subconscious will have to be maintained.

So each society has to create a subconscious. And I call that society good – remember it – I call that society good which creates a subconscious that can be dispensed with very easily; and I call a society bad which creates such a subconscious that cannot be dispensed with: because if it cannot be dispensed with, then it becomes a hindrance when you try to be aware. And, really, no such good society exists now which gives you a dispensable substitute, a dispensable subconscious, which gives you a subconscious as a utilitarian instrument so that the moment you become aware, you can throw it.

To me, that society is good and religious which gives you an inherent freedom about the subconscious. But no society gives it. so. no society is religious, really. Every society is totalitarian, and every society takes your mind in such a way that you become just an automaton – and you go on thinking and deceiving yourself that your thoughts are yours. They are not! Even the very language we use is contaminated, the words we use are contaminated. We cannot use a single word without the subconscious being there. It comes suddenly. Society uses it very cunningly, and then your reactions, your reflexes, are not spontaneous. […]

This subconscious mind is constantly working, day and night. The mind’s working is double. One working belongs to your conscious mind. It is concerned with how to control the subconscious consciously, constantly. Then the subconscious is controlling the conscious mind. It is working to control your reactions, your actions, your reflexes, everything. Whatsoever you are doing must be controlled! This is the society’s grip on you. You are just moving in society’s hands. No value is yours. How can it be? How can a value be yours when you are not at all aware? Only awareness can give you authentic, individual values.

All these values are supplied. If the society is vegetarian, then you have vegetarian values. If the society is non-vegetarian, then you have non-vegetarian values. If the society believes in this, then you are a believer in it. If the society doesn’t believe, then you are a disbeliever. But you are not; only society is there.

This is a double control: one control is on your conscious mind, your behavior. Another control is more deep and more dangerous, and that is the control on your instinctive nature. The first part is conscious, the second is subconscious. The subconscious is created by society. And the third is the instinctive. which is given by biological nature: that which you really are biologically, that which you are born with. That’s a third part, the deepest: the biological instinctive nature.

This second, subconscious mind is controlling outward behavior and also controlling inward instincts. Nothing should be allowed to come up to the conscious mind from your instinctive nature if the society is against it. Nothing should be allowed to come up – even up to your consciousness. So this subconscious creates a great barrier for the instinctive nature.

For example, sex is an instinct, the deepest, because without it life cannot exist on earth. So life depends on sex. It is not easily dispensable; obviously, it must not be – otherwise life will become just impossible. So it has a deep grip. But the society is anti-sex; it is bound to be. The more a society is organized, the more it will be anti-sex – because if your sex instinct can be controlled then everything can be controlled, and if your sex instinct cannot be controlled then nothing can be controlled. So it becomes a fighting ground.

You must be aware that whenever a society becomes sexually free, that society cannot exist. It is defeated. When Greek culture became sexually free, Greek civilization had to die. When Roman civilization became sexually free, it had to die. Now America cannot exist anymore. America has begun to be sexually free. The moment a society becomes sexually free, the individual is not in its grip. You cannot force him.

Really, unless you suppress sex you cannot force your youth to war. It is impossible. You can force your youth into war only if you suppress sex. So the hippie slogan is really meaningful: “Make love, not war!” So society has to suppress the deepest instinct. Once it is suppressed, you can never rebel. Many things have to be understood about it.

Children, when they mature sexually, begin to be rebellious – never before. The moment a boy is mature he will begin to be rebellious against his parents, never before – because with sex comes individuality. With sex he really becomes a man, never before. Now he can be independent. Now he has the initial energy with him, because he can propagate, he can reproduce. Now he is complete.

At fourteen, a boy is complete, a girl is complete. They can be independent of their fathers and mothers, so rebellion begins to take shape. If the society has to control them, sex must be suppressed. All instincts have to be suppressed because we have not been able yet to create a society in which freedom is not against all, in which one individual’s freedom is not against all. We have not yet been able!

We are still primitive, not yet civilized, because a society can be called civilized and cultured only when each individual grows to his total potentiality, is not suppressed. But politics will not allow it, religions will not allow it, because once you give total freedom to instinctive nature, then churches and temples and the so-called religious business cannot continue. Religion will be there, more authentic, but religions cannot continue: because if you cannot create fear, then no one will come to this religious business.

People come because of fear; and if you suppress their instincts, they become fearful – fearful of themselves. A child feels existential fear for the first time when his sex is suppressed. He feels guilty. He begins to feel that something is wrong, and he begins to feel also that “No one has this evil that I am having inside. I am guilty.” You create guilt; then you can control. Then he feels inferior inside, afraid. This fear is then exploited by religious heads, by political leadership, because they all want to dominate.

You can dominate only when people are fearful. And how can you create fear? If you can convince them that something which is constantly within them is sin, they will be fearful. They will be fearful! All the time sex will be there, and they will become afraid – afraid of themselves and guilty. They cannot enjoy anything then. Then the whole life becomes a frustration. Then they go on seeking somewhere help, guidance, someone to take away their responsibility, someone to lead them to heaven, someone to protect them from hell.

This third, instinctive layer is the unconscious. The subconscious is controlling it every moment – every moment! And it controls so fanatically that everything is destroyed – or at least distorted. We never feel from the third layer what real instinct is. We never feel! Everything is distorted. From this subconscious mind – the most suppressed, the most distorted, the most destroyed – come all the miseries. All the miseries, all the paranoia, all the schizophrenia, all mental diseases, they come from this third layer.

These three – conscious, subconscious and unconscious – these are the three types of thoughts. The deeper the layer from where the thought comes, the more irrelevant it looks. So if you just write down your thoughts as they happen, you will feel that you are just mad. What is going on in your mind? What type of thinking is going on? Most of it looks irrelevant. It is not! It is relevant, only with missing links – because the subconscious will not allow everything to come up. Something escapes and comes to the mind, and the gaps are there.

That’s why you cannot understand your dreams: because even in dreams the subconscious is always alert not to allow everything, and the unconscious has to try symbolic routes. It has to change everything just to escape the censor of the subconscious. So it goes on giving you messages in symbolic, pictorial forms.

Your mind is flooded: first, with outward reactions and reflections which are natural; second, by subconscious thoughts which have been produced by the society; and third, by instinctive nature which has been suppressed totally. These three constantly flood the mind. And because of these you are constantly wavering – constantly wavering and trembling. You cannot even sleep. Dreams will continue; that means mind will continue wavering. Twenty-four hours a day, the mind is just a mad thing going round and round and round.

In this state of affairs, how can you be still? How can you attain the posture, the non-wavering mind? How can you achieve it? And when the rishi says that non-wavering knowing is the posture – the right posture – he means that unless these layers are broken and the contents released, you will never be in a state of pure knowing. The mind will not be cleansed; you will not attain the purity of perception. So what to do? What to do to achieve this non-wavering knowing?

Three things: one, whenever you are living moment-to-moment, don’t allow your subconscious to interfere constantly. Sometimes, just drop the subconscious and live in the moment. It is not needed. sometimes it is needed. When you are driving, the subconscious is needed, because the skill of driving becomes a part of the subconscious. That’s why you can talk and you can smoke and you can think and you can drive. The driving is now not a conscious effort. It has been taken over by the subconscious. So it is good to use it whenever it is needed, but when it is not needed, just drop it – put it aside! Without any murmur, just put it aside and be in the moment.

There are many moments when the subconscious is not needed, but only because of old habit you go on using it. You have come back from the office and you are sitting in your garden: why should the subconscious come in now? You can listen to the birds just as once you listened when you were a child without a subconscious.

Relax in these moments, and just be there near the reality. Don’t allow your subconscious mind to come in. Just put it aside! Play with children, put the subconscious aside.

A father who cannot play with his children as their equal cannot really be a right father, because no communication is possible unless you are equal to them. A mother cannot really be a mother unless she can become a child again with her child. Then there is a rapport. Then both become equal. Then there is a friendship. Then a different quality of love comes in. So, really, a child never feels independent, free, at liberty with his parents – never! He begins to feel freedom for the first time when he goes to his chums – not with his parents.

So remember constantly that whenever you can relax your subconscious, relax it! It is not needed to be there every moment.

There are many moments, but you will not relax it even in your bed. You have gone to sleep and it is working. You want to sleep and it will not allow you. It says, “I am to do much work.” It goes on thinking; it goes on working. You can put off the light – mm? – that means you stop the first, the peripheral mind. Now there will be no light; you will not be able to see. You can close the doors. Now there will be no noise, no sound. You have completely closed yourself off from outside stimuli. That means now you need not react, so the first layer of the mind is relaxed.

But what to do with the second layer? You put off the light, close the doors, close your ears, close your eyes, but it goes on working – because you have never allowed it not to work. And, really. A man is not the master of his mind unless he achieves this: that when he wants to work with the mind he works; when he doesn’t want to work the mind, he doesn’t. And the second capacity is the greater. […]

It needs only the breaking of an old habit. But you have never tried it. You have used your subconscious constantly; your subconscious mind doesn’t have any memory of when you have allowed it not to work. So the first thing to do is to allow your subconscious mind sometimes to be put aside. Don’t use it, and soon you will have a less wavering mind. You can become capable of this, and it is not difficult. You must only become conscious of your subconscious workings. Don’t allow – just relax sometimes and tell your subconscious mind: “Stop!”

One thing more to remember: never fight with it; otherwise, you will never be capable of this nonwavering. Never fight with it, because when a master begins to fight with his servant, he accepts equality. When a master begins to fight with a servant, he has accepted him as the master. So please remember: never fight with the subconscious mind; otherwise, you will be defeated. Just order it – never fight.

Know the difference – what I mean when I say just order it. Just say to it, “Stop!” and begin to work. Never fight with it! This is a mantra, and the mind begins to follow it. Just say, “Stop!” Nothing more, nothing less. Say, “Stop totally!” and begin to behave as if the mind had stopped. And soon you will become capable, and you will be just wonder-struck at how this mind stops by just saying “Stop!” It is because mind has no will.

You might have seen someone in a hypnotic trance. What happens? In a hypnotic trance, the hypnotist goes on simply giving orders and the mind follows – the man follows. Absurd orders, and the man begins to follow, the hypnotized subject follows them. Why? Because the conscious mind has only been put to sleep, and the subconscious mind has no will of its own. Just tell it to do something and it will do it.

But we are not aware of our own capacity, so rather than ordering we go on begging, or, at the most, we begin to fight. When you fight, you are divided. Your own will begins to fight with you. The subconscious mind has no will at all. So, if you want to stop smoking, don’t try. Just order and stop. Don’t try at all. If you fall in the trap of trying you will never win, because you have accepted something which is not there. You just say to the mind, “Now I stop this very moment,” and soon you will become aware that things begin to happen. It is natural! Nothing is strange about it: it is just natural. Once you have to be aware of it, that’s all. So just put the subconscious mind aside and begin to live in the moment.

Then the second thing you have to do is: when you have become capable of putting the mind aside when something outside is working as a stimulus, then try the other way – when some instinct is coming up, just put the subconscious mind aside. It will be a bit difficult, but when the first thing is achieved it will not be difficult at all. Just see now that again the sex is coming up, the anger is coming up, and just say to the subconscious mind, “Let me face it directly. Don’t come in – let me face it directly! You are not needed.” Just order the mind and face the instinct directly. And once you begin to encounter your own instincts directly, you will be the master without the need of any control.

When you need control, you are really not the master. A master never needs control. If you say, “I can control my anger,” you are not the master – because a controlled thing can erupt any moment, and you will remain constantly in fear of that which you have controlled. There will be a constant fight. In any weak moment you will be defeated. So, please, don’t control. Be a master! – don’t control. These are two completely different dimensions.

When I say be a master, this mastery comes only when you encounter your nature, your biological nature as it is, in its purity. I wonder, have you ever seen your sex in its purity without moral teachings coming in, without the gurus and mahatmas dropping in, without the scriptures? Have you seen your sex instinct in its purity, in its pure fire? If you have seen it, you will become the master of it. If you have not seen it, you will remain a cripple and you will remain a defeated one. And howsoever you try to control, you will never be able to control it. That is impossible!

Control is impossible: mastery is possible. But mastery has a different root. Mastery means knowledge; control means fear. When you fear something, you begin to control. When you know something, you become the master: there is no need to control. And knowledge means direct encounter. Instincts should be known in their purity. Drop the subconscious, because it is a constantly disturbing factor. It goes on distorting things; it will never allow you to see things as they are. It will always put the society in between, and you will see things through the society as they are not.

Really, this is the miracle of the subconscious mind – that if you look through it things begin to be as you see them. The subconscious mind can impose any color, any shape on things. Just put it aside; face your biological nature directly. It is beautiful! It is wonderful! Just face it directly. It is Divine! Don’t allow any moralistic nonsense to distort it. See it as it is.

Science observes things, and the basis of its observation is that the observer must not come in: he must remain just an observer. And whatsoever the thing reveals should be allowed. The observer must not come in to disturb and destroy or distort or give a shape or a color. A scientist is working in his lab: even if something comes up which destroys his whole concept, his whole philosophy, his whole religion, he must not allow his mind to come in. He must allow the truth to be revealed as it is.

The same goes for inner working, inner research: allow your biological nature to reveal itself in its pure being. And once you know it you will be the master – because knowledge means mastery, knowledge means power. Only ignorance is weak. And through control there is no knowledge, because the whole concept of control is brought in by the subconscious, by the society.

So if you can do two things with your subconscious: one, allowing the fact of the outside Existence to come to you directly; and then, two, allowing the “facticity” of the inside Existence to be realized in its purity, in its innocence – then a miracle happens. It is a miracle, and that miracle is this: that subconscious and unconscious drop. Then mind is not divided in three. Then mind becomes one. That oneness of mind, undivided oneness, is what the Upanishads call “the knowing” – because even the knower is not there. When these three divisions have dropped, when even this division of knower is not there, then only pure knowing, only mirrorlike knowing remains.

With this knowing, you have two centers: one, the outside periphery where you unite with the universe; and another, the inside where again you unite with the universe. And this knowing joins both the inner and the outer – the atma and the brahma.

This pure knowing is without any trembling. This pure knowing is the posture, the right posture, in which the Enlightenment happens, the Realization happens, in which you become one with Truth. This is the door – but how to cleanse? It is not simply a theory; it is not a theoretical statement at all. It is just a scientific procedure; it is a process. Do something to dissolve the divisions of the mind. And if you want to dissolve the mind, concentrate on the subconscious, the middle portion of the mind, which is society. Drop it!

It is, of course, necessary for a child to be brought up in a society. It is necessary! So the subconscious is a necessary evil: the society has to teach him many things – but they should not become fetters. That’s why I say that a better society, a real, moral society, will also teach, side by side, how to break this subconscious. A better society will give its children the subconscious with a conscious methodology of how to drop it when it is not needed and how to be free of it.

It is needed up to the point when you become aware, when you achieve an awakened state of mind. Until then it is needed. It is just like a blind man’s staff. A staff cannot substitute for eyes: it is just a groping in the dark. But a blind man needs it, and it is helpful – but a blind man can become so much attached to his staff that when his eyes are healed and he has begun to see, he still cannot throw away his staff, and goes on groping. Because groping is easier when the eyes are closed, he remains with closed eyes and goes on groping with his staff.

This subconscious is like a blind man’s staff. A child is born, but he is not born aware. The society has to give him something so that he can move and grope – some values, some ideals, some thoughts. But they should not become the eyes. And what I am saying is: if you drop the divisions and create more awareness within yourself, you will have eyes, and with those eyes this staff is not needed.

But it is a related thing. If you drop the subconscious, you will become aware; if you become aware then the subconscious will drop. So begin from anywhere. You can begin by being more aware, then the subconscious will drop. Mm? This is a samkhya process, this is a samkhya methodology: just be aware and, by and by, the subconscious will drop. The yoga process is a second way – the other, the contrary: drop the subconscious, and you will become more aware. Both are related.

So wherever you want to begin, the important thing is to begin. Begin from anywhere, either from being more conscious or from being less obsessed with the subconscious. And when these divisions drop, you will have a pure knowing. That pure knowing is the posture. With that pure knowing, with that non-wavering knowing, your body will achieve a stillness you have not known at all.

We are not aware: that’s why we don’t know how disturbed we are in our bodies. You cannot sit still, and if you try to sit still then for the first time you will become aware of subtle movements in the body: the leg will begin to say something, the hand will begin to say something, the neck will begin to say something, every part of the body will begin to give you information. Why? It is not that when you sit still the body begins to move; it is moving every moment. It is only because you are otherwise occupied that you are not aware. There are subtle movements continuously: your body is constantly moving and moving. This constant wavering really doesn’t belong to your body. It belongs to your mind. The body only reflects. […]

A Buddha sits just like a statue. It is not that he has forced his body to be still. The mind is still, and the body need not reflect because there is nothing to reflect.[…]

Unless one can be so silent, one can never feel what Existence means, what life means, what the bliss of it is, the benediction. Only in such silence does life descend. You become aware of the music, of the nectar. You begin to feel it, but only in silence. And that silence comes only when you are non-wavering. If you are wavering, if the mind is just wavering and there is trembling inside, you cannot feel that silence.

You cannot attain silence directly: you have to attain non-wavering, then silence comes as a shadow. If non-wavering comes, then silence comes. […]

Silence never divides, silence joins you.

For example, if we are sitting here and everyone becomes so silent that not a thought has any existence, not a single ripple is there in the mind, everyone silent, totally silent, will you be different from anyone else? Will you be different from your neighbors? How can you be different? The feeling of difference is a thought. Do I mean you will feel one with them? No, because the feeling of oneness is a thought. You will simply be one, not a feeling. Really, there will be no one here – just silence. […]

When you begin to be silent you begin to be in deep communion with Existence. Thoughts and thoughts are noises. Waves and waves are thoughts and tremblings inside. They create a barrier, they disrupt – they make you alone. Then you begin to be alone in this whole universe, and that loneliness creates meaninglessness. The more lonely you are, the more you will feel meaningless, futile, useless, and then you will begin to fill yourself with more noise. With radio, television, with anything, you will try to fill yourself, to be occupied. You run from here to there, from this club to that club. Go on running! Don’t leave any gap in which you might become aware of your loneliness! So this whole life just becomes a running from one point to another. This is madness, and the whole earth has become a madhouse.

So attain to this posture – and don’t begin with the body. Begin with the subconscious mind, and then your body will reflect what is happening within. Even now it is reflecting what is happening within. The body is a mirror; it is transparent. Those who have eyes, they know that the body is transparent. You enter here, and I know what is happening inside you – because you cannot enter without showing it. You look at me, and I know what is happening inside your eyes – because how can you raise your eyes without expressing that which is within? It is being shown every moment!

Every moment is an indication. It is related; nothing is irrelevant. Your body is showing every moment, but you don’t know the body language. The body has a language of its own, and it shows – everything! You cannot deceive. You can deceive with your language. but not with your body – not with your body! You can smile, but your lips will say that there is no smile within. You can show something by your face, you can try, but still the face will give hints that this is false.

This body is just giving information every moment. You cannot change it. You can try, but you cannot change it. And even if you succeed in changing your body, you can succeed only in deceiving others not yourself, because the inside cannot change by the outside change. It is not basic. You can cut a tree by the roots, but not by the leaves. If you cut the leaves, new leaves will come up again and one leaf will be replaced by two. Cut two, and four leaves will come out of that spot. The tree will take revenge, the roots will take revenge. They will say, “You are cutting one leaf – we will put two. We are capable of constantly supplying – infinitely.”

So don’t be bothered by leaves. And body has only leaves: roots are deep within. Cut the roots, and the leaves will wither away by themselves. When there are no roots to feed, the leaves will drop by themselves. Your body will change. Change the mind and the body will change. Mind is the root!

Attain a non-wavering knowing, and the door will be open, and you will be able to have a glimpse into the unknown. The unknown is not far off: only you are closed. The unknown is here, but you are running. The unknown is here, but you are in such a hurry and in such speed that you cannot look at it.

Stand still! I don’t mean your body: let your mind stand still, your consciousness, and suddenly you will become aware of something which has always been there. You have been seeking for it, seeking and searching, lives and lives running for it – and it was here. It is so near, and that’s why you have missed it. It is just by the corner, and you have sought it everywhere except this place where you are standing.

Non-wavering reveals to you the here and now. That standing still in consciousness reveals to you the presence which is here.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.1, Discourse #5

For a related post see Encountering the Unconscious.

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.

Sowing Seed – Osho

Maneesha, a great master on his own authority, Nangaku, is working on a greater master, Ma Tzu, who is just a seed right now, but contains a great buddha.

You are also seeds. It is up to you if you remain closed. Then you will never know your ultimate nature as a buddha. A little courage, a little opening, a little dying of the cover of the seed and the buddha starts sprouting in you.

You cannot blame the climate. The rains are there. The clouds have even entered into the auditorium, they are just passing before my eyes. So close are the clouds . . . but the strange thing is that the closer the clouds are, the more the seed becomes afraid. Afraid of the unknown, afraid of . . . one never knows what is going to be outside. Hidden inside a cover, the seed feels safer, more secure.

On the path of Zen, you have to learn these important words: openness, joy in insecurity – a challenge from the unknown has always to be welcomed. That is the way of growing up. Most of the people in the world, who Wilhelm Reich has called “little men,” die as little men, although their destiny is not to be little men. Wilhelm Reich was perfectly right in respect of the masses, the crowd, to call his book Listen, Little Man. But he was absolutely wrong because he could not see that hidden in the little man is the greatest buddha.

He simply condemned the little man because all the little men were condemning him. He was a genius; not a buddha but an intellectual giant, and he has been condemned by the crowds. Finally he was forced within the walls of a madhouse. And he was saying immensely sensible things. He was bringing a new territory to be explored.

But all those fearful people, afraid of the unknown, afraid of losing the security and the safety of the bank balance, forced him into a madhouse. And he was not mad. In his madhouse days he wrote his best books. They are evidence that he was not mad. But the politicians and the crowd and the government all conspired to force him to live in a madhouse. They all laughed at his immensely valuable discoveries about human energy. Naturally he was angry.

So when he wrote the book Listen, Little Man, it was not out of compassion, it was out of reaction. They had done harm to him, and he at least was able to condemn them. His book is beautiful in describing the little man. But the essential part of the little man is the seed, his potentiality, which Reich completely forgets in his anger.

Otherwise, he was very close to becoming enlightened. But in his anger, his reaction, he was incapable of seeing the point that the people were bound to condemn him – his being a genius was enough reason for their condemnation. They were bound to crucify him and it had to be understood as the natural course of things. But he could not take it as the natural course of things. He could not understand that it is something that has to happen to every genius who opens the doors of insecurity.

And because of this great cloud of anger, he was completely blind, unable to see that the little man is a buddha, hidden deep down as a seed.

Nangaku is instructing Ma Tzu.

After his first instructions from his master, Nangaku, on the meaning of the dharma, Ma Tzu felt as if he were drinking the most exquisite nectar.

After bowing to the master, Ma Tzu asked him, “How must one be attuned to the formless samadhi?”

The first thing to understand is the meaning of dharma. Unfortunately, the Sanskrit word ‘dharma’ – or the Pali word which Buddha used, ‘dhamma’ – has been wrongly translated as ‘religion’ by the theologians, and by scholars it has been translated as ‘law’, the ultimate law. Both have missed the point.

Dharma is not religion. In fact if you go to the roots of the words, religion means that which binds you, and dharma means that which frees you. They are absolutely contrary to each other. Dharma simply means your intrinsic nature. It is not written in scriptures and nobody can tell you what your dharma is. You have to find it yourself. This is a great dignity, conferred on the individual by existence, that you don’t have to live on borrowed knowledge. The living source of life is just flowing close by. Why not drink it and be quenched?

Ma Tzu says, after understanding the meaning of the dharma, that He felt as if he were drinking the most exquisite nectar. The deeper you go in your meditations, the closer you will come to the eternal stream of your life sources. It is pure nectar, because it declares your immortality, it declares your eternity. It declares that death is a fiction; it has never happened and will never happen to anyone. One only changes the house; one gets into another form or maybe into the formless existence.

Ma Tzu’s statement that He felt as if he were drinking the most exquisite nectar shows his tremendous understanding. He is very new in meditation; he is so young. But age has nothing to do with your realization. It is not that when you get old, you will be able to become a buddha easily. On the contrary, the older you become the more difficult it becomes for you to drop your lifelong habits, concepts, ideologies.

Just two years ago Pope the Polack was in India and he was surprised to see that the very poor and the orphans who have been converted to Christianity were doing the same in their churches as they had been doing before: burning incense, bringing flowers for Jesus Christ. He could not believe what the priests were doing, because these people were doing exactly what they used to do in their temples. Instead of Krishna, now Christ is there, everything else is the same.

But the priests told him that they had to make a few considerations, a few compromises. These people cannot understand a religion without incense, without flowers. And the pope conceded that for Indian Christians it is okay.

As you become old, it becomes very difficult to change your ideology, your lifelong belief. It becomes hardened. The old man becomes hard, and in the same way everything around him becomes hard. The best situation in which to grow into your potential is childhood. Next to it is your youth. Most probably the childhood will be spoilt by the parents, by the priests.

The authentic religion has to depend on youth, because youth has a certain rebelliousness natural to it. A young man can rebel against the whole past without any guilt. He can clean his heart of all the old dead scriptures and statues, and the challenge of the unknown stirs his heart. He wants to accept the greatest challenge, and this is the greatest challenge in life – to allow your seed to open to the unknown skies, to the winds, the sun, the rain; one never knows what is going to happen.

There is nobody to guide the seed, there are no scriptures for the seed to read. The seed is taking a risk by coming out, and you should understand that the risk is not small. The risk is exactly a death. The seed has to die in the soil; only then the sprouts of the potentiality of the seed will start growing. Perhaps it will become a rose flower, or a lotus, or some other kind of flower. It does not matter. What matters is flowering, not the name of the flower. A wild flower is as beautiful as the most precious rose. They are brothers in one way, that they both have come to their flowering. They have both enjoyed the joy of growth, they both have seen with their own eyes what was hidden in their seed. They have both taken the same risk and the same challenge.

In fact, it is a death and a resurrection. The seed dies and resurrects into many flowers, into many fruits, into many seeds. It is said that a single seed can make the whole earth green. Just one plant is not its potential. On that one plant there will come thousands of seeds again, each seed again carrying thousands of seeds.

Just a single seed can fill the whole earth with absolute greenness. Such tremendous possibility in a small seed! And you are a living seed, conscious. The most precious thing in existence is within you: consciousness. The seed is groping in the dark, still finding the way. And you are conscious, you have a little light, but you don’t move from your position, you remain a little man. In fact you hate all those who have gone to the other shore because their very going condemns you, that you have failed to fulfill your own destiny.

After bowing to the master, Ma Tzu asked him, “How must one be attuned to the formless samadhi?”

The master must have said to him that unless you become attuned with existence in utter silence, you cannot know the dharma, the very principle of life and existence. Ma Tzu’s inquiry is that of an honest seeker. He loved what was said, he felt it as if it was exquisite nectar – but he would not believe it. There are still things to be settled. His question is not the question of a student, it is the question of a would-be master.

“How must one be attuned to the formless samadhi?”

He cuts out all unnecessary questions and comes exactly to the right thing, how one should be attuned to the formless samadhi.

Samadhi is a Sanskrit word, very beautiful in its meaning. It comes from a root which means, when there is no question and no answer, when your silence is so profound that you don’t even have the question; answers are left far away but you don’t have even the question. Such innocence which is just silent is called samadhi. And in this samadhi you can fall in tune with the heartbeat of the universe. Only in samadhi can you become one with the whole. There is no other way.

Every day what we are doing in the name of meditation is moving towards samadhi. Meditation is the beginning and samadhi is the end. Ma Tzu’s question is that of a potential buddha. He is not asking about non-essentials, just the very essential.

The master said, “When you cultivate the way of interior wisdom, it is like sowing seed. When I expound to you the essentials of dharma, it is like the showers from heaven. As you are receptive to the teaching, you are destined to see the Tao.”

Tao is Chinese for what we call samadhi; the Japanese call it satori, the Chinese call it Tao. Tao is perhaps the best of all these expressions, because it is not part of language. It simply indicates something inexpressible, something that you can know but cannot say, something that you can live but cannot explain. It is something that you can dance, you can sing, but you cannot utter a single word about it. You can be it; you can be the expression of Tao, but you cannot say what it is that you are expressing.

Ma Tzu again asked: “Since the Tao is beyond color and form, how can it be seen?”

You have to understand this dialogue very deeply, because it will give you the right direction for what has to be asked. There are thousands of things to ask, but the essentials are very few and unless you start by asking the essentials, you will not come close to the truth.

As Nangaku mentioned the Tao, Ma Tzu immediately asked: “Since the Tao is beyond color and form, how can it be seen? – you are saying that if you enter into samadhi, you will see the Tao.”

The master said: “The dharma-eye of your interior spirit is capable of perceiving the Tao. So it is with the formless samadhi.”

It was for this reason that the East had to develop the concept of the third eye. These two eyes can see only the form, the color, but they cannot see the formless and the colorless. For the formless and colorless they are blind. In samadhi you close these eyes and a new perceptivity, which can be metaphorically called ‘the third eye’, arises in you; a new sensitivity which can feel and see what is not possible for your outer senses.

The dharma-eye, which is the third eye of your interior spirit, is capable of perceiving the Tao. When I say to you in meditations, “Go deeper, look deeper,” I am trying in every way so that your third eye, which has remained dormant, opens up.

Ma Tzu still asked, “Is there still making and unmaking?”

Can we do something inside? Can we make a buddha inside? Is there still some creativity inside? It is a very profound question.

To this, the master replied, “If one sees the Tao from the standpoint of making and unmaking, or gathering and scattering, one does not really see the Tao. Listen to my gatha.”

He says that as far as your inner world is concerned your buddha is already there; you don’t have to make it. Everything is as it should be in your inner world.

I am reminded of the Russian scientist, Kirlian, who brought a new vision to the objective scientist; its implications are immense. He was a great photographer and he went on perfecting and refining his lenses. His whole idea was that if something is hidden in a seed as a potential, then perhaps the photograph of the potential can be caught with a better lens.

It was a very strange idea, but scientists and mystics and philosophers and poets are all a little bit crazy. Everybody tried to persuade him: “Don’t do such nonsense, how can you see the rose in the seed?”

He said, “If it is going to be, then it must be present in some way – perhaps our eyes are not capable of seeing it.” And finally, he succeeded. He managed to create lenses which could take a photograph of what was going to happen in the future. He would put the seed in front of his camera and a photograph would come of a rose flower.

And then he would wait for the seed to die into the soil – and it was one of the miracles of modern genius, that when the real rose came, it would be exactly the same as the photograph. He has caught the future in his net.

He became convinced that if it is true about the seed then it can be used in many things. For example, Kirlian photography has now become an absolute must in Russian hospitals. People come just to be checked, to see if there is any possibility of disease in the future.

His lenses have become even more refined now after his death; a whole school of Kirlian photographers has been working on it. They can see at least six months ahead. If you are going to be sick in six months’ time, the photograph will show it – that after six months you will have cancer.

There is no other way to find it out, but it can be treated although it has not become manifest. It is a tremendous blessing to medicine. We can cure people before they become sick.

What we see with our eyes is not all. Even in the outside world our eyes have limitations. Kirlian photography has gone beyond our eyes into the objective world. In the same way the third eye opens in the inner world and brings you your whole potentiality in its fullness. You don’t have to do anything, you have just to recognize it. A buddha is not made, a buddha is only remembered.

Nangaku said, “Listen to my gatha.” That is an ancient way; ‘gatha’ means poetry. “What I could manage to say in prose, I have said. Now listen to my poetry. Something that I have not been able to say in prose can be said in poetry.

“The ground of the no-mind
Contains many seeds
Which will all sprout when
Heavenly showers come.”

They have come and now it is up to you to take the challenge.

“The flower of samadhi
Is beyond color and form.

How can there be any more
Mutability?”

It is said that at this, Ma Tzu was truly enlightened, his mind having transcended the world of phenomena. He attended upon his master for a full ten years. During this period, he delved deeper and deeper into meditation.

Kanzan wrote:

In my house there is a cave,
And in the cave is nothing at all –
Pure and wonderfully empty,
Resplendent, with a light
Like the sun.
A meal of greens will do
For this old body,
A ragged coat will cover
This phantom form.

Let a thousand saints appear
Before me – I have the
Buddha of heavenly truth!

Once you have looked into your inner cave and found the light, the life, the very source of your being, then the so-called saints don’t mean anything. They are just moralists, following a certain system of morality, beliefs, but they don’t have the truth. If you have the truth then even a thousand saints cannot weigh more than your buddha. Your buddha is the ultimate and it is not borrowed. You have discovered it.

Maneesha has asked:

-Osho

From Ma Tzu: The Empty Mirror, 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.

A Direct Apperception – Jean Klein

Presence, the now, refers to our eternity. We can never think of it, represent it, because we are it. It is an instantaneous apperception that it refers to our totality. Every step undertaken to find it is going away. It is the ultimate goal in every human being to know it, to be it. It is everlasting peace and joy.

Jean: Any questions?

Q: You’ve said that it is only through inquiry, by asking the question, “Who am I?” that we come to know our real nature, ourselves. At what point in a life time does the question really come up? When do we really feel the question?

Jean: It needs a certain maturity to come to this question. By maturity I mean that you know, in a certain way already, what you are not. This knowing what you are not brings you to the fore feeling what you are. The moment you know what you are not, you are free from all directions, and you are brought back to the starting point which means, “Who am I?” And in this moment, there is no more reference to anything, anything known. And then, I would say, you are taken by reality. There is no more a knower and something known. There is only being the known.

Q: But how can I ask the question so that it doesn’t remain mental? So that it has real transformative power to change my life? Otherwise, it remains mental repetition, or a mental inquiry. How do I make it a really existential question, living question?

Jean: When you ask the question, you don’t know the answer. So automatically you find yourself in a state of not knowing. In this state of not knowing, your mind is completely unfurnished. You are free from all representation. It is only in this state of not knowing, in this openness of not knowing, waiting for the eventual known. When the waiting becomes free from what it is waiting for – in this waiting without waiting – there is the living answer.

Q: What does it mean to be enlightened?

Jean: It supposes that there is somebody to be enlightened. As long as you take yourself for somebody, you live in darkness. When you realize that the somebody is a mental image, and it is when you think of it and you produce it. Then you give it up. This image has no more a role to play. And in this instantaneous giving up, it gives you up. It produces, I would say, a great laughing. In this laughing, it’s like you will feel yourself free from all representation. You function in daily life and all functions refer to you.

Q: Many teachers teach different forms of meditation practice. If a person sincerely follows a meditation practice, will that lead him to the consciousness or the non-state that you have referred to?

Jean: Going to meditation means to find yourself in a laboratory. The entity which looks for peace, joy, security, in other words God, will never find it because our cerebrality can never know what truth really is. So, as long you can find the meditator, meditation is an illusion. And this giving up the meditator and even the meditation, then what remains, I would say, is a current of love. There is not another, only the love.

Q: But the conditioning to take ourself as a person runs so deeply, don’t we need some kind of technique or process to break ourselves of this identification, to decondition the mind and the body?

Jean: Every state, every object refers to the now. It appears in the now, and it vanishes in the now. Every technique remains [keeps] you in the realm of the mind, but that can never free yourself from the mind, free from memory. So I would say, see really what is next to you, what is the near to you, look at your nearness. It can never be an object. It can never be a state. You are your nearness. Otherwise, there is conditioning and conditioning. To see it really clearly means wisdom.

Q: Jean, isn’t this rather confusing for someone who would come to one of your seminars and find that there is meditation. There is bodywork, an advaita yoga you might say, where we are working with sensation and feeling the energy body. All of which ultimately have to be objects. All of which are existent and not eternal. What do they have to do with this nearness, this presence you are speaking of?

Jean: We are working with objects, sensation, feelings, but really, we don’t know this original perceptions, original feelings. We know only a certain pattern. In this session, you become familiar with listening, listening to your sensation, to your feelings, your reactions, resistance. In this listening, you give the feeling, the sensations, the opportunity to unfold itself in the observation. It comes to a new reorchestration of your feelings and sensations. This unfolding is only possible because you are open to it, you welcome it. Now welcoming is an idea, but really with your whole being being open to it, what refers to your totality. You realize that it isn’t you, that you are not in the body, in the perception, in the feeling.

Sometimes we use certain techniques, which generally are used in a progressive way, but it is only occasionally. It is the idea behind that which we are looking for – we are it fundamentally – because in the end all things appear in the now, and it has its reality in the now. It is the now which gives the perceptions, the apperceivings, its reality. I would say, only then we have a certain reality. We have an expanded reality, but at the end, it belongs to the now, to the present. All what appears is a prolongation, an expansion, of the now, of consciousness, of awareness.

So, it brings you back, in other words, to your real nature, because all that is done emphasizes not on the object part but on the ultimate subject part, consciousness.

Q: This listening that you speak of, is this an integral part of being or is it an attribute, a way toward being?

Jean: The listening of which you are speaking is free from all memory. There are no expectations. There is no goal. In this listening we are looking away from the goal, looking away from the target. So it is unconditioned listening. In listening, the listening is open to itself. It refers to itself. And at the end, it knows itself by itself.

Q: You said that all objects point to our true nature or the background, do some objects point more directly, and just what do you mean by this?

Jean: All objects point where [toward] your real nature, but then? When? you see nearer an object the smallest sense perceptions. It belongs to our five senses. So generally, when the mind is not informed that you are behind all sense perceptions, then you are more or less fixed to the sense perceptions. So your question, is there other form of objects which reveals your real nature, I would say these are objects which point directly to beauty. This means these are objects which have been conceived, produced in beauty, and these objects, the artist which offers it to you in a certain way, don’t emphasize the object part what is producing. It is why he produced it in a very economic way. He frees the object of its objectivity. So the listener, or the person who looks at it, may be free from the senses and brought back to real beauty.

The artist has from time to time, this feeling of absolute beauty, free from the person. And then this state, free from the person, the artist likes, I would say, to thank – thanking to be allowed to be. And this thanking brings him to offering. He offers it. And the object which he offers is free from any anecdotic part, and free from keeping it for the senses. So in a certain way, he shares his inner beauty. His beauty is your own beauty and oneness. It is so in listening to music, and it is also looking at any art objects – sculpture, painting, architecture, and so on.

Q: In this enlightened non-state, what about feelings and emotions? Do you feel anger or happiness and joy in the same way or is there a difference?

Jean: When you are established in the now, the present, there is no place for somebody who reacts, who resists. All what appears to you, appears to your totality. All counterparts – positive, negative – are, I would say, abolished. You may say certain things appearing in your life are not completely appropriate. That is sure, but there would not be a reaction. When you qualify it, it is more or less; it is not functional, but you are not more psychologically involved in it.

Q: Jean, I would like to ask a question about relationships. When two people come together, like a man and a woman, and live with each other, and one of them is interested in this kind of approach to life and the other perhaps isn’t, it is often a lot of ground for conflict, which has led me to feel sometimes that it might be better if I were living alone. It might be somehow easier to accomplish this kind of awakening. And I wondered what you had to say about that?

Jean: It is love which brought both together. And it is in this oneness that the personality of each unfolds, but both personalities refer to oneness, to love. When the personality of the woman, of the man don’t refer to the oneness, to love, you can be sure there is a kind of degeneration because the personality, the character, or what you call the individual, has its reality in this oneness, in love. It is so on every level. Every activity in its own level refers to this oneness. Otherwise, there is a moment, there is no more stimulation. It is this oneness which gives life to all activities. The moment we believe in this restricted being, of personality to personality, of man and woman, then you can be sure there is not only a kind of degeneration in its form of energy, but there is constant comparison because the personality is completely insecure, looks for security, for the moment that doesn’t refer to the oneness. There is only asking, demanding. So, you must refer to the original encounter, you as a man with a woman which means love.

Q: Jean, you just mentioned referring to the oneness. I notice that when I experience fear, I identify almost totally with my body and biological survival. How can I break that restricted identification when I am in that state?

Jean: Fear is first a perception. You feel fear. And then feeling, you qualify it. You name it; you say “fear”. But the word fear is memory refers to a certain pattern that you have, the notion that you mean by fear. So the idea of fear doesn’t refer to the actual fear, the actual perception. So pedagogically I would say, free yourself from the concept fear then you face really the perception which is localized in your body.

See in this moment how you function. You try to change the fear. You try to escape. You try by all means to refuse it. In the refusing, in the escaping, you give more or less fuel to the fear. When you see it really, there is a moment natural that you allow the fear to be fear. And it becomes energy – really energy alive. You accept it completely. It is not psychological acceptance, but it is functional acceptance – accepted to know it more and more deeply. Then the perception refers completely to your accepting. It is in this accepting position that what you accept frees itself; and it dissolves in you, in your presence. It reveals really what you are profoundly.

Live with the fear more and more deeply. Accept it. Even love it. You are not more bound it. When you are not more bound to it, when you are not more involved in it, it frees itself. It is a reaction. But in accepting it you will come completely through the fear. You remain completely a witness to it. It vanishes in your witnessing. It means intimate living. You are able to do it.

Q: Jean, this question has probably come up many, many times, but it is the issue of money and our desire for it, and how we use it, and our feeling that it is going to provide security for us. Could you speak about the issue of money and our proper relationship to it.

Jean: I have observed that many people have a wrong relationship with money. First, I would say that you are not the owner of your money. You are the administrator. And being an administrator of your money, you are detached in a certain way. You have a non-relation with your money because an ownership is avidity, a striving, a coming. An administrator is only functioning. Try functioning with your money and spending it and then earning it.

The first thing what I think is that you are completely emotional, psychologically involved with your money. It is generally when you take your money for [as] yourself, an expansion of yourself, belonging to yourself, that you will have a bad death. You will only dying [die] but never really dying [die]. It is your money which keeps you from dying. Many people take risk with your [their] body and mind, but they would never take risk with the money, for money is something which keeps you. Owns you. Lets you never go. Because there is a moment in life that they have to go. But what is important [is] that when you be really [are] an administrator of your money, the distribution and the earning become really functional. It’s been coming to you because somebody has spent it.

Apparently, I don’t see that you spending money [is] an augury. The question may be more or less the mind. (Soft laughter.)

Q: Thank you.

(More laughter.)

Jean: I think in daily life you should come often back to the starting point and the starting point you can never think of it because the moment you think of the starting point the point is already in the past. The starting point is the presence, the eternal now. All flows out from the now, and all appears and disappears in the now. And the now is a kind of original perception. It is a direct apperception; you know yourself in your totality. There is not a knower there is only known.

-Jean Klein

From Dialogues with Jean Klein, Part 1

Here you can read more from Jean Klein.

Here you can listen to A Direct Apperception (Dialogues with Jean Klean part 1).

Here you can listen to Dialogues with Jean Klein part 2.

Here you can watch the videos of the Dialogues with Jean Klein on YouTube.

This Light in Oneself – J. Krishnamurti

One can talk endlessly, describing, piling words upon words, coming to various forms of conclusions, but out of all this verbal confusion if there is one clear action that action is worth ten thousand words. Most of us are so afraid to act because we ourselves are confused, disorderly, contradictory and rather miserable. And we hope through this confusion, through this disarray, that some kind of clarity could come into being, a clarity that can never be clouded over, a clarity that is not of another, a clarity that is not given or induced or taken away, a clarity that keeps itself without any effort, without any volition, without any motive, alive; a clarity that has no end and therefore no beginning. Most of us do desire, or most of us, if we are at all aware of our inward confusion, want such clarity.

This morning, if we may – and I’m sorry you have to sit in a hall like this when there are lovely clouds, clear sunshine and waving trees; to sit in a hall is rather unpleasant – I would like this morning, if I may, to see if each one of us could come upon this clarity, so that when you leave this hall your mind and your heart are very clear, undisturbed, with no problems and no fear. If we could go into this it would be immensely worthwhile to see for each one of us if we could be a light to ourselves, a light that has no dependence on another and that is completely free. To go into that one has to explore rather a complex problem. Either one can explore it intellectually, analytically, taking layer after layer of confusion and disorder, taking many days, many years, perhaps a whole lifetime – and then not finding it. Either you do that, this analytical process of cause and effect; or perhaps you can side-step all that completely and come to it directly – without the intermediary of any authority of the intellect, or of a norm. To do that requires that much abused word ‘meditation’. That word has unfortunately become a monopoly of the East and therefore utterly worthless.

I don’t know why the mysticism, if it is mysticism at all and not self-hypnosis and illusion, why the Orient, the East, has this peculiar dominance over the West about spirituality, as though they have got it in their pocket and give it out to you. Most of them do at a considerable expense, you have to pay for it: or they use that as a means of exploiting you in the name of an idea or a promise. I don’t know why, both in India and those unfortunate people who come out of that country, including myself – though I am not an Indian, I refuse to have any nationality – there is a peculiar feeling that being an old civilization, having talked a great deal about this peculiar quality of spirituality, that they therefore have this authority. I’m afraid they haven’t – they are just like you and me, they are as confused, dull, clever with their tongues, and they have learnt one or two tricks and try to convey to others the method, the system of meditation.

So that word has become rather spoilt; like love it has been besmirched. But it is a lovely word, it has a great deal of meaning, there is a great deal of beauty, not in the word itself but the meaning behind that word. And we are going to see for ourselves, each one of us, if we cannot come upon this state of mind that is always in meditation. To lay the foundation for that meditation one must understand what living is – living and dying. The understanding of that life and the extraordinary meaning of death is meditation; not searching out some deep mystical experience; not – as it is done in the East – a repetition of words, as the Catholics and others also do, a constant repetition of a series of words, however hallowed, however ancient. That only makes the mind quiet, but it also makes the mind rather dull, stupid, mesmerized. You might just as well take a tranquillizer, which is much easier. So that is not meditation, the repetition of words, the self-hypnosis, the following of a system or a method.

I think we should be very clear about these two facts: experience and following a method, a system, that promises a reward of vast transcendental experience and all that silly nonsense. When one talks about experience, the word itself means, does it not, ‘to go through something, to be pushed through’. And to experience also implies, doesn’t it, a process of recognition. I had an experience yesterday, and it has either given me pleasure or pain. To be entirely with that experience one must recognize it. Recognition means something that has already happened before and therefore experience is never new. Do please bear this in mind. It can never be new because it has already happened before and therefore there is a recollection, a remembrance, a memory of it and therefore a person who says, ‘I’ve had great transcendental experience, a tremendous experience’, such a person is obviously either exploiting others, because he thinks he has had a marvelous experience, which already has happened and therefore is utterly old. Or, a person who says, ‘I’ve had the most extraordinary spiritual experience’ wants to exploit others. Truth can never be experienced, that is the beauty of it, because it is always new, it is never what has happened yesterday. That must be totally, completely, forgotten or gone through – what has happened yesterday – the incident of yesterday must be finished with yesterday. But to carry that over as an experience to be measured in terms of achievement, to convey to others that one has something extraordinary in order to impress, to convey, to convince others, seems to me so utterly silly.

So one must be very cautious, guarded about this word experience, because you can only experience and remember that experience only when it has already happened to you. That means, there must be a center, a thinker, an observer, who retains, holds the thing that is over and therefore something already dead; and therefore nothing new. It is like a Christian steeped in his particular conditioning, burdened with two thousand years of propaganda; when he perceives or has a vision of his savior, whatever he may call him, it is merely a projection of what has been, his own conditioning, his own wish, his own desire. It is the same in the East, their own particular Krishna or whoever it is.

So one must be tremendously cautious about this word. You cannot possibly experience truth. As long as there is a center of recollection as the ‘me’, as the thinker, truth is not. And when another says that he has had an experience of the real, distrust him, don’t accept his authority. We all want to accept somebody who promises something, because we have no light in ourselves, and nobody can give you that light, no one – no guru, no teacher, no savior, no one. Because we have accepted so many authorities in the past, we have put our faith in others, either they have exploited us or they have utterly failed. So one must distrust, deny all spiritual authority. Nobody can give us this light that never dies.

And the other thing is this acceptance of authority – the following of another who promises through a certain form, certain system, method, discipline, the eventual ultimate reality. To follow another is to imitate. Please do observe all this, listen to all this simply. Because that is what one has to do: one has to deny completely the authority of another, however pretentious, however convincing, however Asiatic he be. To follow implies not only the denying of one’s own clarity, of one’s own investigation, one’s own integrity and honesty, but also it implies that your motive in following is the reward. And truth is not a reward. If one is to understand it, any form of reward and punishment must be totally set aside. Authority implies fear. And to discipline oneself according to that fear of not gaining what the exploiter in the name of truth or experience, and all the rest of it says, denies one’s own clarity and honesty. And if you say you must meditate, you must follow a certain path, a certain system, obviously you are conditioning yourself according to that system or method. And what that method promises perhaps you will get, but it will be nothing but ashes. Again the motive there is achievement, success and at the root of it is fear, and fear is pleasure.

It is clearly understood between yourself and myself that there is no authority in this. The speaker has no authority whatsoever. He is not trying to convince you of anything, or asking you to follow. You know, when you follow somebody, you destroy that somebody. The disciple destroys the master and the master destroys the disciple. You can see this happening historically and in daily life, when the wife or the husband dominate each other, they destroy each other. In that there is no freedom, there is no beauty, there is no love.

So, having laid that clearly then we can now proceed to meditate about life, about death, about love. Because if we do not lay the right foundation, a foundation of order, of clear line and depth, then thought must inevitably become tortuous, deceptive, unreal, and therefore valueless. So the laying of this order, this foundation, is the beginning of meditation. Our life, the daily life which one leads, from the moment we are born till we die – through marriage, children, jobs, cunning achievements – our life is a battlefield, not only within ourselves but also outwardly, in the family, in the office, in the group, in the community and so on. Our life is a constant struggle: that is what we call living. Pain, fear, despair, anxiety, with enormous sorrow constantly our shadow, that is our life. Some of us, perhaps a small minority, and it is always a small minority that create, bring about a vital change, perhaps a small minority, neither accepting or denying this disorder, this confusion, this frightening mess in ourselves, and in the world, can look at it, can observe this disorder without finding external excuses – though there are external causes for this confusion – to observe this confusion, to know it, not only at the conscious level but also at a deeper level.

You know a great deal, especially in the West, has been written about the unconscious. They have given such extraordinary significance to it. It is as trivial, as shallow as the conscious mind. You can observe it yourself, not according to any specialist; if you observe it you will see that what is called the unconscious is the residue of the race, of the culture, of the family, of your motives and appetites and all the rest of it – it is there, hidden. And the conscious mind is occupied with the daily routine of life, going to the office, sex and all the rest of it. To give importance to one or to the other seems to me so utterly empty. Both have very little meaning, except that the conscious mind has to have technological knowledge in order to have a livelihood.

This constant battle, both within the deeper layer as well as at the superficial layer, is the constant way of our life, and therefore a way of disorder, a way of disarray, contradiction, misery. And such a mind trying to meditate, by going to some school in the East, is so utterly meaningless, infantile. And so many do, as though they can escape from life, put a blanket over their misery and cover it up. So meditation is bringing about order in this confusion, not through effort, because every effort distorts the mind. That one can see. To see truth the mind must be absolutely clear, without any distortion, without any compunction, without any direction.

So this foundation must be laid; that is, there must be virtue.

Order is virtue. This virtue has nothing whatsoever to do with the social morality, which we accept. Society has imposed on us a certain morality, and the society is the product of every human being. Society with its morality says you can be greedy, you can kill another in the name of god, in the name of your country, in the name of an ideal; you can be competitive, you can be greedy, envious, monstrous, within the law. And such morality is no morality at all. You must totally deny that morality within yourself in order to be virtuous. And that is the beauty of virtue; virtue is not a habit, it is not a thing that you practice day after day in order to be virtuous. Then it becomes mechanical, a routine, without meaning. But to be virtuous means, does it not, to know what is disorder, the disorder which is this contradiction within ourselves, this tearing of various pleasures and desires and ambitions, greed, envy, fear – all that. Those are the causes of disorder within ourselves and outwardly. To be aware of it; to come into contact with this disorder. And you can only come into contact with it when you don’t deny it, when you don’t find excuses for it, when you don’t blame others for it.

Then in the denial of that disorder there is order. Order isn’t a thing that you establish daily; virtue which is order comes out of disorder, to know the whole nature and structure of that disorder. This is fairly simple if you observe in yourself how utterly disorderly we are, which is how contradictory we are. We hate, and we think we love. There is the beginning of disorder, this duality. And virtue is not the outcome of duality. Virtue is a living thing, to be picked up daily, it is not the repetition of something which you called virtue yesterday. Then that becomes mechanical, worthless.

So there must be order. And that is part of meditation. Order means beauty and there is so little beauty in our life. Beauty is not man made; it is not in the picture, however modern, however ancient it is; it is not in the building, in the statue, nor in the cloud, the leaf or on the water. Beauty is where there is order – a mind that is utterly unconfused, that is absolutely orderly. And there can be order only when there is total self-denial, when the ‘me’ has no importance whatsoever. The ending of the ‘me’ is part of meditation. That is the major, the only meditation.

Also we have to understand another phenomenon of life, which is death – old age, disease, and death accidentally through disease or naturally. We grow old inevitably and that age is shown in the way we have lived our life, it shows in our face, how we have satisfied our appetites crudely, brutally. We lose sensitivity, the sensitivity that one has had when one was very young, fresh, innocent. And as we grow older we become insensitive, dull, unaware and gradually enter the grave.

So there is old age. And there is this extraordinary thing called death, of which most of us are dreadfully frightened. If we are not frightened, we have rationalized this phenomenon intellectually and have accepted the edicts of the intellect. But it is still there. And obviously there is the ending of the organism, the body. And we accept that naturally because we see everything dying. But what we do not accept is the psychological ending of the ‘me’, with the family, with the house, with the success, the things I have done, the things I have to do, the fulfillments and the frustrations – and there is something more to do before I end! And the psychological entity, the ‘me’, the I, the soul, the various words that we give to this center of myself as my being, we are afraid that will come to an end. Does it come to an end? Does it have a continuity? The East has said it has a continuity, reincarnation, perhaps being born better next life if you have lived rightly. And you have here other forms of resurrection and a new way – you know, all that. After all if you believe in reincarnation, as the whole of Asia does – I don’t know why they do, what they do, because it gives them a great deal of comfort – if you do believe in that idea then in that idea is implied, if you observe it very closely, that what you do now, every day, matters tremendously, because in the next life you’re going to pay for it or be rewarded for how you have lived. So what matters is not what you believe will happen next life, but what you are, how you live. And that is implied also when you talk about resurrection. You have symbolized it in one person and worship that person, because you yourself don’t know how to be reborn again in your life now – not in Heaven at the right hand of god, or the left hand, or behind, or forward of god, whatever that may mean.

So what matters is, how you live now – not what you think, what your beliefs are, what your dogmas, superstitions are, what your achievements are, but what you are, what you do. And we are afraid that the center, called the ‘I’, should come to an end; and we say: does it come to an end? If you have lived in thought – please listen to this – if you have lived in thought, that is when you have given tremendous importance to thinking, and thinking is old, thinking is never new, thinking is the continuation of memory – if you have lived there, obviously there is some kind of continuity. And it is a continuity that is dead, over, finished, it is something old. Therefore only that which ends can have something new.

So dying is very important to understand: to die, to die to everything that one knows. I don’t know if you have ever tried it? To be free from the known, to be free from your memories, even for a few days; to be free from your pleasure, without any argument, without any fear, to die to your family, to your house, to your name, to become completely anonymous. It is only the person who is completely anonymous who is in a state of non-violence; he has no violence. And to die every day, not as an idea but actually; do it sometime.

You know, one has collected so much, not books, not houses, not the bank account, but inwardly, the memories of insults, the memories of flattery, the memories of neurotic achievements, the memory of holding on to your own particular experience, which gives you a position. To die to all that, without argument, without discussion, without any fear just to give it up. Do it sometime, you’ll see. It used to be the old tradition in the East that a rich man every five years or so, gave up everything, including his money and began again. You can’t do that nowadays, there are too many people, everyone wanting your job, the population explosion and all the rest of it. But to do it psychologically. It is not detachment, it is not giving up your clothes, your wife, your husband, your children or your house, but inwardly not to be attached to anything. In that there is great beauty. After all, it is love, isn’t it? Love is not attachment. When there is attachment there is fear. And fear inevitably becomes authoritarian, possessive, oppressive, dominating.

So meditation is the understanding of life, which is to bring about order. Order is virtue, which is light, which is not to be lit by another, however experienced, however clever, however erudite, however spiritual. Nobody on earth or in heaven can light that, except yourself, in your own understanding and meditation. And to die to everything within oneself, for love is innocent and fresh, young and clear.

Then, if you have established this order, this virtue, this beauty, this light in oneself, then one can go beyond. Which means then the mind, having laid order, which is not of thought, then the mind becomes utterly quiet, silent – naturally, without any force, without any discipline. And in the light of that silence all action can take place, the daily living, from that silence.

And if one has or if one were lucky enough to have gone that far, then in that silence there is quite a different movement, which is not of time, which is not of words, which is not measurable by thought, because it is always new; it is that immeasurable something that man has everlastingly sought. But you have to come upon it; it cannot be given to you. It is not the word, not the symbol, those are destructive. But for it to come, you must have complete order, beauty, love, and therefore you must die to everything that you know psychologically, so that your mind is clear, not tortured, so that it sees things as they are, both outwardly and inwardly.

-J. Krishnamurti

From Public Talk #4, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 19 May 1968

Here you can listen to the talk This Light in Oneself.

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