Category: Meditation

I AM is the Way – Osho

And Jesus says, . . .  And receive you unto myself; that where I am, where ye may be also.

That is the whole effort of a Master. The Master wants to destroy the disciple so that the disciple also becomes a Master. The Master’s work is complex. First, he persuades you to become a disciple, he “coos” you, seduces you to become a disciple. Once you are a disciple, he starts killing and destroying you because unless you are destroyed as a disciple you will never become a Master.

And the real Master is one who wants you all to become Masters. That is the goal. Everybody should become an emperor, a king, a queen. The slavery – visible, invisible – has to be completely destroyed. All kinds of imprisonments around you have to be burnt down. Your freedom has to be made utter, ultimate.

And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.
Thomas saith unto him. Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?

Thomas is one of the most-loved disciples of Christ, one of the most innocent. The others are a little bit knowledgeable.

When Jesus says And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know, nobody else said anything. They must have kept quiet. Nobody knows where he is going, nobody knows the way which he is going to follow but only the most innocent of them is ready to ask.

Thomas says,
Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?
We have never been there.

Thomas was one of the most intimate and closest disciples. When Jesus came to India, Thomas followed him. Indian Christianity is older than any other Christianity in the world. The Indian Church is the oldest Church in the world because Thomas was the first apostle to come to India. Indian Christianity was started by Thomas.

Thomas asks, “We know not where you are going and which way you are going. And how can we know? – we are ignorant.”

The real disciple never pretends to be knowledgeable. If he does not know, he is ready to say he does not know because that is the only way to learn from the Master. The knowledgeable disciples never learn a thing.

I have a few here too. When they ask questions, their questions have a different quality – as if they are asking for the others’ sake. They have no problems of their own. Sometimes they write in their questions too “This is not my question – just for the others’ sake . . . People will be enlightened. Many people have this question in their minds and it will be good if you discuss it. But it is not any personal question!” This is their question, but they cannot even confess that this is their question. “It will help others.” Tricky people.

Once a man came to me and he said, “One of my friends has become impotent. Can you suggest some meditation that can be helpful to him?” I looked at the man, and I went on looking at him. He started trembling and perspiring. He said, “Why are you looking at me so hard?”

I said, “Can’t you send your friend? He can say that one of his friends has become impotent. Can’t you say even that? Have you become so impotent that you cannot even say that a problem has arisen in your being?”

Now he wants to know what can be done, but he does not want to show that the problem is his. Some friend . . . Now he is being diplomatic. Many questions come which are diplomatic: the questioner himself knows already; there is no problem for him. All the other disciples kept quiet, only Thomas asked. And because of these small gestures, Thomas became more and more close, intimate to Jesus.

Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?

Jesus saith unto him, I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.

This statement is of immense importance, and has been tremendously misunderstood by Christians, misinterpreted. This statement has become a protection for the priest, for the dogmatist, for the demagogue. Christians have taken it to mean that nobody ever comes to God unless he comes through Christ – that means Jesus, son of Mariam. Nobody comes to God unless he comes through Jesus. They have meant, or they have interpreted it in such a way, that Christianity becomes the only right religion. All other religions become wrong. All other religions are against God – only Christianity.

Jesus saith unto him, I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.

What does he mean? These priests and the missionaries and the Christians who go on converting the whole world to Christianity, are they right? Is their interpretation right? Or has Jesus something else? He has something utterly else.

In the Bhagavad Gita also there is a statement which Hindus go on misinterpreting. Krishna has said to Arjuna . . . And almost the same quality of closeness existed between Arjuna and Krishna as between Jesus and Thomas – the same relationship. And the same flowering had happened, and the same statement had bubbled up out of that relationship. Krishna said to Arjuna: Sarva dharman parityajya mamekam sharanam vraja: Drop all religions, forget about all religions and come to my feet because it is only through me that one reaches to God.

Now Hindus are happy with this statement. Krishna has said so clearly: Forget all religions. Drop all kinds of other religions and hold unto me. Hold to my feet – Mamekam sharanam vraja. Come to my feet; they are the bridges to God – the only bridges.

Both statements happened in the same kind of situation. Arjuna must have been very very close when Krishna said this. And so is the case with Thomas – he must have been very close. Christ must have been showering like flowers on Thomas when he said this. You will need that loving understanding of a Thomas, only then will you be able to understand the meaning of this. You will need that loving intimacy of an Arjuna; only then will you be able to understand the statement of Krishna. Both are the same, both mean the same – and both have been misinterpreted.

The misinterpretation comes from the priest and the politician – those who try to convert religion into organizational, political strategies.

Jesus saith unto him, I AM the Way . . .

I AM . . . That has to be understood. It does not mean Jesus, it simply means the inner consciousness: “I am” – the inner life. This consciousness inside you, which you call “I am,” this “I am” is the only way. If you can understand this “I am,” what it is, what this consciousness is, you have found the way. It has nothing to do with Jesus, it has nothing to do with Krishna. When I say to you “I am the gate” it has nothing to do with me! That I AM is the gate. The gate is within you, the way is within you, the truth is within you. You have to understand who this is calling himself “I am” within you, what this consciousness is, what it consists of.

If you can go into your consciousness, if you can feel, see, realize the nature of your consciousness, that is the way. Meditation is the way – not Christ, not Krishna, nor Mohammed. Who am I? – this question will become the way.

Raman Maharshi is right when he says that only one question is relevant: Who am I? Go on asking this question, let this question become a fire in you. Be aflame with it! Let every cell of your body and your being, and every fiber of your existence pulsate, vibrate with it. And let this question arise from the deepest core: Who am I? And go on asking; don’t accept any answer that is given by the mind. You have been reading the Upanishads, and in the Upanishads, they say “You are God.” And your mind will say “Why are you asking again and again? I know the answer: You are God. And keep quiet!” Or if you are a Christian and have been reading the Bible again and again, you know: The kingdom of God is within you. So, “Who am I?” – “The kingdom of God. Now keep quiet!”

No answer from the head has to be accepted. No answer from the memory has to be accepted. No answer from knowledge has to be accepted. All answers have to be thrown in the whirlwind of the question “Who am I?” A moment comes when all answers have gone and only the question remains, alone like a pillar of fire. You are afire with it! You are just a thirst, a passionate quest: “Who am l?” When the question has burned all the answers, then the question burns itself too, it consumes itself. And once the question has also disappeared, there is silence. That silence is the answer. And that is the door, the gate, the way, the truth.

Please be careful. When Jesus says I AM the way, he means the one who calls himself I AM within you is the way. It has nothing to do with Jesus. Just by holding the feet of Jesus you are not going to go anywhere. Just by praying to Jesus you are not going to go anywhere. Listen to what he is saying.

Each Master throws you back to yourself because ultimately God is hidden in you as much as in the Master. You are carrying your light within yourself. You just have to turn back; you have to look inwards.

I AM the Way, the Truth . . .

Yes. In your very consciousness is the truth. When you become fully conscious you become the full truth. When you are absolutely conscious, it is not that you face truth as an object, you are the truth, it is your subjectivity, it is you. That’s what Upanishads say: Tatwamasi: Thou art that.

. . . and the Life . . . 

Three things Jesus says: It is the life – I AM, consciousness, awareness. This is life – the life that you know, the ordinary life. Then the second: I AM the Way – the way that joins the ordinary life with the extraordinary life, the way that joins Adam with Christ, the way that joins body with soul. And the third thing: I AM the Truth. Jesus has said all the three things.

You are that right now because I AM the Life. And you have the way too, hidden behind you, within you: I AM the Way. And you are the ultimate goal too, the destiny. You are the beginning and the middle and the end. You are Adam, Jesus and Christ.

. . . no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.

No man has ever entered into God unless he has entered into his consciousness, until he has entered into his “I am”-ness. This is the meaning. This is the meaning of Krishna, and this is the meaning of Christ. This is the meaning of all the Masters. […]

Forget all that Christians have been saying. Those dogmatic assertions are all chauvinistic. Forget what the theologians have put on top of Jesus’s pure statements. Put aside all that has been taught and go directly into these sayings, and meditate. And immense will be the benefit. You will be blessed.

This is one of the greatest stories of human history, of human transformation. How Adam becomes Christ. How unconsciousness becomes luminous. How the ordinary is transformed into the extraordinary. How the worldly becomes suffused with the other-worldly. How matter is transmuted into consciousness.

Enough for today.

-Osho

From I Say Unto You, Vol. 2, Discourse #9

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Also see Three Stages of Human Consciousness: Adam, Jesus and Christ.

And Jesus was a Buddha.

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt I AM is the Way.

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.

Jesus was a Buddha

Jesus was a Buddha and Gautama was a Christ. Both of these enlightened masters were speaking from the same Ultimate Reality. And yet, within the teachings of Christianity, there seems to be such a narrow teaching – that Jesus is the only way.

It seems that much of the conflict between Christianity and other religions stems from a couple of sayings attributed to Jesus. What if we just got the translation wrong, or they were not fully understood when they were spoken?

Certainly, one of the most repeated is quoted in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” And following that (and in Christians eyes makes it clear that Jesus is the only way), “No man cometh unto the Father but by Me.”

This statement can be looked at from a higher vision, from an unlimiting consciousness rather than the common narrow interpretation. Rather than “I am the way,” we could say “I AM is the Way, I AM is the truth and the Life.” What a difference is made by just adding ‘is.’ Looked at in this light, it is easier to understand the statement of Jesus in John 8:58, “I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am.” In fact, it is the only way that the sentence makes sense. I AM is the ultimate subject, first person singular, which each of us is at our very core. It is this “I AM” that we have to return to in order to reach the Father.

-purushottama

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

Franklin Merrell-Wolff addresses this issue in chapter seven of his Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object. The chapter is titled Jesus and the Way which can be seen here.

Imaginative mental activity is the enemy of Satori – Hubert Benoit

According to Zen, man is of the nature of Buddha; he is perfect, nothing is lacking in him. But he does not realize this because he is caught in his entanglements of his mental representations. Everything happens as though a screen were woven between himself and Reality by his imaginative activity functioning in the dualistic mode.

Imaginative mental activity is useful at the beginning of man’s life, as long as the human machine is not completed, as long as the abstract intellect is not fully developed; it constitutes, during the first period, a compensation without which man could not tolerate his limited condition. Once the human machine is entirely developed, the imagination, while still retaining the utility of which we have just spoken, becomes more and more harmful; it brings about in fact a wastage of energy which otherwise would accumulate in the interior of the being until the crystallization of intuitive non-dualistic knowledge (satori).

-Hubert Benoit

from Zen and the Psychology of Transformation: The Supreme Doctrine

The Silence Between Exhalation and Inhalation – Jean Klein

Feel your feet in contact with the ground. Feel yourself erect, straight, vertical. Move your neck slightly back, so you feel that the cervical region is a prolongation of the rest of your spinal cord. Be aware of the position of your shoulders and shoulder blades. The slightest rising up of the shoulders is a defense. Feel your nostrils. Feel the entrance to your nostrils. Fell the coming and going of the breath several inches in front of the entrance to the nostrils. Do not control the breath or have any pretension of being an observer. Feel the expansion of the breath in the upper part of your torso, on the level of your collarbones. Be completely one with the coming and going of the breath, which is localized on the level of the collarbones. Then feel the expansion of the breath a little lower, in the center, the middle part of your trunk. Now completely ignore the upper part. Be one with coming and going of the breath. Then feel the expanding of the breath in the lower part, the abdominal region. Ignoring the upper and middle regions, go knowingly into the process. Then inhale with all of the regions: lower, middle, upper part; exhale upper part, middle part, lower part. The inhalation and the exhalation take place exclusively through the nostrils.

Let the exhalation go completely to the end. Sometimes you think that you are at the end, but there is still some residue. So go to the very end of the exhalation, but without forcing the air out. Then be completely attuned to the silence after the exhalation, and wait for the inner need of the body to inhale. Feel the exhalation and inhalation several inches in front of the nostrils. There must be no intention in the frontal region of the brain. It then is completely relaxed. There is no rising up of the shoulders. Keep them down, knowingly. There are no gaps or stops and starts in the inhalation and the exhalation; it is one steady flow, from the beginning to end, the same intensity. You live from moment to moment; there is no anticipation to an end. You follow from moment to moment. Be aware during the inhalation that it is not a grasping, a taking. And let the exhalation completely die in silence. There is a moment when there is a forgetting of the inhalation and exhalation, and awareness is in identity with the silence between exhalation and inhalation. Be this identity with the silence.

-Jean Klein

from Open to the Unknown – Third Millennium Publications, 1992

You can read more from Jean Klein here.

Consciousness, the Light Behind All Objects – Jean Klein

klein2Let your mind be very clear that when you are looking for your real self, it is it which is looking for itself. That is why you can never find it – because it is the ultimate looker which looks for itself. In other words, you are fundamentally already what you are. Any movement you undertake is a going away from it. You sit on this chair and you cannot find yourself on the chair by going somewhere else. So the inevitable question is, “How can I become aware of what I am?” But we cannot be aware of the “I am.” We can only be aware of things. All that we are aware of is an object, but what we already are, our real nature, is not an object. It is consciousness, the light behind all objects. It is the ultimate perceiver in which the perceived appears and disappears. It is its own perceiving. So it can never be understood in terms of subject-object relationship. The perceiver can never be perceived, as the eye cannot see its seeing.

All that is perceived, you are not. When you understand this, you are no longer concerned with what you are not, and there is a natural giving up of what you are not. All the energy that was eccentric, spent in achieving, becoming, grasping and so on, comes to a stop. And there is only stillness, silence, which is the original perception of the real self. It is your globality. In this globality, there is not a knower of the globality; otherwise, it could not be globality. We can only say, as in all the sacred sayings, it knows itself by itself.

Jean Klein

from Open to the Unknown – Third Millennium Publications, 1992

You can read more from Jean Klein here.

Going Inside Means Staying Home

When we say to go inside, it is really a misnomer. First, there is no going. Second, there is neither an inside nor an outside.
What we are really indicating is to stop going. Normally, we are constantly projecting. When a thought crosses our space, we project ourselves onto that thought and run with it.

Once we break that association, we are able to see a thought appear and at the same time there is space, and we are aware that we are not that thought. It is an appearance. By staying home, the thought scampers off to find another suitor.

The “practice” consists of this remembering and breaking the habit, the automaton that is our usual way of being. This in turn frees up energy that is normally consumed constantly. It also keeps from wearing out the mental mechanism which is not designed to be running constantly. Then, when it is needed for daily functions, it is fresh, rested, and ready to respond.

-purushottama

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

 

Witnessing and the Heart – Osho

Would you please speak a little on witnessing and the heart. Can they be experienced simultaneously?

Witnessing and the heart are one and the same thing. Witnessing is not of the mind. Mind can never be a witness. When you start witnessing, mind becomes the witnessed not the witness. It is the observed not the observer. You see your thoughts moving, your desires, your fantasies, your memories, your dreams, just as you see things moving on the screen of a film. But you are not identified with them. That non-identification is what is meant by witnessing. Then who is the witness? Mind is being seen then who is the seer? It is the heart.

So heart and witnessing are not two things. If you witness, you will be centered in the heart, or if you are centered in the heart, you will become the witness. These are two processes to reach to the same goal. The lover, the devotee never thinks of witnessing. He simply tries to reach to the heart, to the source of his being. Once he has reached the heart, witnessing comes on its own accord. The meditator never thinks of love and the heart. He starts by witnessing, but once witnessing is there, the heart opens. Because there is no other place from where to witness.

The path of the meditator and the path of the devotee are different, but they culminate into one experience. At the ultimate point, they reach to the same peak. You can choose the path, but you cannot choose the goal. Because there are not two goals, there is only one goal. Of course, if you have followed the path of a devotee, you will not talk of witnessing when you have arrived. You will talk of love. If you have followed the path of meditation, you will not talk of love when you have arrived. You will talk of witnessing. But the difference is only of words, language, expression. But that which is expressed is the one and the same reality.

-Osho

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

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Witnessing and the Heart.

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.

 

 

Infinite Individuality Asserts Indivisible Oneness – Meher Baba

There is no scope for separateness in the vastness of the Infinite Ocean of Oneness. How then can there be any room for individuality in indivisibility? In the indivisible unlimited Ocean of Reality, how can there be scope for each drop that has fully awakened to Reality to individually proclaim: I am the Ocean!

The moment the drop has been stirred to consciousness, it isolates itself into a separate entity and acquires an individuality, a false I-Am-ness. This awakened ‘I’ is enveloped in falseness that grows with every step of its increased consciousness in proportion to its field of impressions and expression. This falseness that at first helps the drop to establish in individuality in the Indivisible Ocean, becomes the perpetual hindrance that keeps the drop from knowing itself as the Ocean. The ‘I’ has to get rid of the falseness before it can realize Who it is in reality.

At the end of the journey, when at long last the Goal is reached by the grace of the Perfect Master, this falseness is entirely removed and the ‘I’ alone remains with its supreme Self-knowledge – saying, my falseness is gone – I am God!

Thus, when each individual drop sheds its false awareness of being other than the Ocean, it proclaims itself as being the Infinite Indivisible Ocean. At the instant its falseness, its very own falseness is removed, the drop asserts its Infinite Individuality. It then consciously and continuously experiences  for all time as being without a second: the Almighty, Infinite and indivisible Paramatma. This is the I-am-God state. This is how every Atma, from the instant its consciousness is unburdened of falseness (i.e., impressions) for all time, asserts itself as Paramatma, God Absolute.

-Meher Baba

From The Everything and the Nothing

Here you will find more posts from Meher Baba.

Here you can download some books by Meher Baba.

Exhausting the Mind – Jean Klein

The following is a question posed to Jean Klein at Delphi, Greece.

When we say that we must come to the end of the mind, that we must exhaust the mind, is it a necessary process, something which must happen, or is it possible to have an insight without the mind being exhausted? And secondly, is this process itself a meditation, or does meditation begin at the end of the mind?

When the mind goes to its end – and it goes to its end when it thinks of the unthinkable – we can call it meditation, because in thinking the unthinkable, we are silent. Our thinking no longer starts from thinking, it starts from silence. When the mind comes to the end of its potentiality, it is a relaxed mind. This means that when there is something to think, it thinks, and the rest of the time it is in non-thinking, that is, a natural state of relaxed, non-directed attention. If we do not come to the end of the thinking mind, we will be bound to it, so that even when there are moments when there is nothing to think, we are still in the mind and live in constant agitation. The relaxed mind functions in discontinuity. Only when it functions like this can we be aware of the continuity behind all functioning. The continuity is timeless meditation. It is this presence which gives life and reality to all appearing. Any other so-called meditation you might do has no flavor. But really, meditation is praying, praying without someone who prays or is prayed to. Real praying is thanking for the joy of being. It is expressed at every moment. Experiences like joy, transcendence, peace and holiness, are all expressions borrowed from the mind. But the meditation we are talking about here is without any qualification. Its only quality is that it is without qualifications. It is the extinction of everything that could be a state.

As long as the mind is not exhausted, it will still be an obstacle to any real insight. Because the uninformed mind, that is, the mind which does not know its limits, will continue to try to understand what is beyond it. It will be driven by will or unconscious reflex, in the old patterns of becoming and attaining. The mind will still be looking for freedom, but in trying to attain it, it goes further away from it. Because there is no way to go to freedom, for there is nobody to go to it. When the mind remains in the reflex that there is something to attain, something to become, something to achieve, it cannot come to the only useful perspective for the mind, the perspective of living in not-knowing. When the mind abides in not-knowing, when it is, at every moment, open to the unknown, it is a tool of higher reasoning. Any other use of the mind is a nuisance.

The important thing is to realize that what we are looking for is the looker, is our presence. To achieve something in the phenomenal realm we must, of course, refer to something we already know. But regarding that which can never be an object, we can never go away from it. We must come to the organic memory of the body. This is important, because through this organic memory we will come to the absolutely relaxed state, where we have all our energy in our hand, so to speak. In this relaxed state the body and the mind come more or less together. There is no more duality. As we have said before, the relaxed body is dynamic, not passive. Passive relaxation is still in duality. It is not integrated because there is still emphasis on the object, relaxation.

Even in a relaxed state, the mind automatically creates pictures, or thoughts. How can we exhaust the mind?

These are residues, and these residues must also come to their exhaustion. When we let them come to their exhaustion, we have a forefeeling of the “I am.” Don’t go into the images or thoughts of these residues. Some teachers say to observe them, listen to them, but don’t go in, don’t follow them. My experience is that we must not observe or listen or follow them because the moment we look at them we feed them by creating a witness to them. Take your stand in the void, the “I am.” From here, you ignore them. But I think that when you become aware of the body, not the concept body but the feeling body, and you are at one with the feeling, in this becoming aware of the true body feeling, the residues of images and words and language have no more power. You are, of course, still in subject-object relation, the perceiver and the perceived body feeling, but there comes a moment where there is only the “I am.”

When we are living in our tactile, global body, we are no longer in our foreheads. Generally, we live in our foreheads, and this localization prevents all global sensation. When we remain in our foreheads, we are in the hands of the devil. So we must become free from the brain. In the beginning there may be some difficulty to be free from the brain, because it is partly activated by the taking and grasping of the eyes, which are very connected with the brain. It is important, therefore, to consciously relax the eyes, to sense the hollows of our eyes, their heaviness. When this part is sensitive, there is a deep relaxation in the brain. Some scientists don’t believe we can sense our brain, but they are studying medicine in a superficial way. We can sense and change our brain. For when the brain becomes relaxed, we feel ourselves no longer localized in the thinking factory of the forehead, but we feel ourselves behind, in the upper cervical vertebrae. When we feel ourselves behind, in our neck, we can no longer see from the point of view of the indivudual which projects individual objects. Because the individual is a thought construct which comes from the frontal area. From behind there is no longer any concretization. There is only a vague cloud of objectivity. Then this subtle localization behind the neck dissolves down into the heart, and the heart is the last door, the last expansion. Finally, we become free also from the heart. We become emptiness, emptiness without border and without center. We are the universe, and the universe is us.

But I would say, take note of all this and immediately forget it.

-Jean Klein

From Open to the Unknown – Third Millennium Publications, 1992.

Here you can read more from Jean Klein. 

I Am Meditation

I begin with the realization that I Am. I may not be sure what I Am but I know that I Am. I cannot deny that, even to deny that, I need to be. I am first person singular.

I begin with the feeling I Am. Staying with this sensing, I can see that everything I think I am begins with this I Am. In order to think thoughts and have ideas about myself, I need a being, an I Am.

Now, meditating on this I Am, all projections cease. I allow all that I think I Am to return to this root. I see that I Am Not This nor That but simply I Am. I Am at the root of being. I Bathe in this Beingness. I Rejoice in this Divine Beingness. I Melt in this Love of Being.

This Beingness is the True Guru, the real teacher. I surrender to the feet of this Beingness. I trust this I Am, and when thoughts reappear, I remember being is prior to thought. I am not my thoughts.

I am Awareness.

-purushottama

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