Category: Active Meditations

While You can Do Something, Non-doing is not Possible – Osho

If one experiences or understands inwardly the deep feeling of becoming as a dry leaf to be moved only by the existence itself, then how can one push oneself to breathe or jump or do anything at all but lie flat on the earth and dissolve?

First, to experience and to understand are two different things. If you experience this there is no need to ask the question – just lie down flat on the ground and dissolve. Why ask the question? This is an act, you are doing something. No dry leaf has ever asked. But the very question shows that intellectually you understand, but you have not experienced any such thing – and intellectual understanding is not understanding at all. Intellectual understanding is just appearance of understanding, it is not understanding.

Why do I say this? I will read the sentence, you will feel why. “If one experiences or understands . . .” You cannot use the “or” because they are not the same thing – either you experience or you don’t experience. First thing, intellectual understanding is not equal to experience. ” . . . Or understands inwardly the deep feeling of becoming as a dry leaf to be moved only by the existence itself, then how can one push oneself to breathe or jump or do anything at all but lie flat on the earth and dissolve?”

You will have to do that also – to lie flat. You will have to do that also – to lie flat on the earth. And if you can do that, why can’t you push, jump and breathe?

I will tell you one anecdote.

It happened, one Zen monk, Dogen, used to tell his disciples, “Unless you die, you will not be reborn.”

So one stupid disciple – and there are always many – thought, “If this is the key, then I must try it.”

So one day he came and did just as you have said. He must have lain with closed eyes, flat out in front of the door of the master, just in the morning when the master was expected to come out for the morning prayer. The master opened the door and found that his disciple was lying there not breathing, as if dead. The master Dogen said, “Okay, doing well.”

So the disciple opened one eye just to see the expression on the master’s face, and Dogen said, “Stupid! Dead men don’t open their eyes!”

You will have to do that also – to lie flat on the ground – but that will be your doing. And these breathing exercises are to help you so that it can happen and is not your doing. All these techniques of meditation are to help you to come to this realization when suddenly you feel that it is happening – you have fallen on the ground, dissolving. But that should not be something done on your part, you cannot do it. If it is a doing the whole point is lost. It must be a spontaneous happening.

And right now, whatsoever you do will not be spontaneous, whatsoever you are doing you have to make effort. And I know that you have to make effort for breathing, for catharsis, for the mantra Hoo – and you have to bring all effort possible. These efforts are not going to become your enlightenment, because enlightenment is never achieved through effort, but these efforts will help you; they will bring you to a point where you can become effortless. And when you become effortless, enlightenment is always there. You can stop them, but just by stopping them nothing will happen. Continue them, and do them as totally as possible because then you will come to realize sooner that nothing can be achieved through effort.

Nothing can be achieved through effort – you have to realize this. I can say this, but this will not be of much help. I know well that just by breathing fast you are not going to enter into nirvana. I know it well. And just by crying and dancing no one has ever entered there. Even if their door is open, they will close it, if they see that you are coming doing Dynamic Meditation they will close the door. This I know well.

I have heard, one Christian missionary was giving a sermon to some middle-school students, small boys and girls. After the sermon he asked, “Those who want to go to heaven should raise their hands.”

So all the boys except one raised their hands. Only one boy, someone called Johnny, remained silent.

The missionary asked, “Don’t you want to go to heaven?”

Johnny said, “Not with this bunch!”

So if you go doing Dynamic Meditation even I cannot enter with you, it is impossible. But I know that Dynamic Meditation is not the end, it is just to prepare you so that you can drop automatically. It is to exhaust you and your ego; it is to exhaust your mind, your body; it is to exhaust your individuality.

And when your individuality is exhausted completely you will drop on the ground like a dry leaf. But not like Dogen’s disciple – if he could have done Dynamic Meditation the whole story would have been different. Then there would have been no need to lie down on the ground, he would have fallen on the ground.

And if you have to lie down, that shows only that you are withholding yourself, you are not really exhausted. If you simply move totally in whatsoever I am saying to do you will get exhausted. You have a certain amount of energy, a limited amount of energy – that energy can be exhausted. Once exhausted you will become a dry leaf, a dead leaf.

When you cannot do anything only then can non-doing happen. While you can do something, Non-doing is not possible.

-Osho

From Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi, Discourse #13, Q2

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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.

I am not Going to Give You a New Pattern

You said that through chaotic breathing you want to destroy our old wrong patterns – to rebuild us in a new dimension. Please explain how this rebuilding in a new dimension happens after the old has been destroyed.

You have misunderstood me. The chaotic method is to destroy the old patterns, not to create a new one. It is not to create a pattern at all. Just the old pattern has to be destroyed. The method, all meditative methods, just destroy your conditioning without conditioning you in any way; otherwise there will simply be a change of fetters, a change of prisons. The new prison may look a little better but it is still a prison.

The unconditioned mind is the end – a mind which has no pattern around it. The old pattern has to be destroyed, and the new is not to be created because the new will become the old again. Nothing has to be created in its place; you are to be left alone without a pattern. But you have lived so long in patterns that you cannot conceive of how you can live without a pattern. How can you live without conditioning? How can you live without a discipline? How can you live without fetters? You have lived so long in slavery, in conditioning, that you cannot conceive of what freedom is. But you can live; really, only then will you live.

A conditioned mind is not alive. For instance, people come to me and they say, “You do not give us any discipline: what to eat, what not to eat, what to do, what not to do. You simply give us meditation and let us go into chaos. You do not give us something to live by. You just push us into chaos without any discipline.”

I do not give you any discipline because only those who are enemies to you can give you disciplines. I give you awareness, not discipline. And your awareness will give you spontaneous light about what to do and what not to do. And who can decide beforehand? And what is the need to decide it beforehand? When the moment arises, when the situation is there, you will be alert enough to do whatsoever happens to you – what is felt by your awareness itself to be done.

If you are aware, you do not need any discipline. Only people who are fast asleep need discipline because they do not know what to do. They need a pattern to follow. Their whole life becomes a misery because no pattern can be helpful in a changing life. Every pattern will become a prison because life is constantly changing. This moment one act may be good but the next moment it may become bad because the situation has changed. And you go on following a dead pattern; you never fit anywhere. […]

You will not fit because you can fit only when you are flux like, changing. A fixed entity cannot fit in a riverlike existence. You must be fluid. Only when you are liquid, fluid, flowing, changing, alert, aware, will you not repent. You will never feel guilty; you will never feel that something was better than what you did. Nothing can be better because you responded totally. That was all that could have been. Nothing else was possible.

My meditation technique is not to give you a new pattern; it is simply to drop the old pattern, to destroy it and leave you completely free without any imprisonment around you – without any prison. Of course, you will feel difficulty because the prison was also a shelter. Now there will be rains and there will be no shelter, and the wind will come and there will be no shelter, and the sun will be there, hot and burning, and there will be no shelter, and you would like to hide somewhere. Your eyes have become so accustomed to darkness that in the light you will feel uneasy. But this is what will make you free. You will have to get the feel of the new life under the open skies. Once you know the freedom and the beauty of it, once you have become aware, once you have come out of the prison, the old habit, you will not ask for any pattern or any discipline.

And this doesn’t mean that your life will become a chaos – no! Your life will be the only ordered life possible. The life that you are leading is a chaos. It only seems to be ordered on the surface. Behind it, underneath, there is disorder and turmoil. Only on the surface have you created the appearance of order. Look within yourself: there is disorder. Ordered life will be disordered; disciplined life will be chaotic within. This looks paradoxical but this is so, this is the truth. Only an alert life will have an order – not forced but spontaneous, alive. The order will go on changing with life. It must.

A spontaneous life is just like your eyes. Do you know that your eyes go on changing continuously? And when they stop changing, then you need some technical help. When I am looking at you and you are ten feet away from me, my eyes have one kind of focus. When I start looking at the hills which are far away, my eyes immediately change. The lenses of the eyes change immediately. Then only can I see the hills. When I look at the moon, my eyes change immediately.

You come into the house, it is dark; your eyes change. You come out of the house, it is light; your eyes change. And when your eyes become fixed, they are ill. They must be flux like; only then are you capable of seeing. The more flux like the eyes, the more liquid they are, without any pattern, the more they are just changing with the situation, then the more alert your consciousness will be.

Meditation will give you an inner eye which will be constantly changing, constantly aware of the new situation, constantly responding. But the response will come from your total being, not from a pattern. The response will come from you, not from a conditioning. […]

So I am not going to create a new pattern for you. I am a destroyer. I am not going to create anything, really. I am just going to destroy, because there is no need to create. You are already there behind the structure. If the structure is destroyed, you will be freed. If the structure which binds you is no more there, you will be there. You are not to be created; you are already there. Only the walls of the prison have to be destroyed and you will be under the open sky.

You have misunderstood me. I told you this chaotic meditation is to destroy your conditioning, your slavery, your mind, your ego – in a deep sense, you. It has to destroy and then the new will be born. I am not saying I will create it. No one can create it. And there is no need: it is already the case. It is there. Only the shell has to be broken and it will come out.

All religion is destructive in this sense. The society is constructive, religion is destructive. Society constructs the conditioning. Society makes you a Hindu or a Christian or a Jaina. Society never allows you to be yourself. It gives you a pattern, because society is an organization. The society wants you to fit into that organization according to its own rules. The society doesn’t want you; the society only wants your efficiency. You are not the point; you are not the target. You must behave like a mechanical thing. The more mechanical you are, the more society will appreciate you because you will be less dangerous.

No machine can be dangerous. It never goes out of the way: it never disobeys, it never rebels, it is not revolutionary. No machine is revolutionary; it cannot be. All machines are orthodox: they obey, they follow. Society tries to change you into a mechanical thing. Then you are more efficient, less dangerous, reliable, responsible. And there is no fear, no danger; you can be relied upon.

The society creates a mechanical device around you: that is the conditioning. And it allows you only certain outlets and closes certain things completely. It chooses some fragments from you and approves them, then rejects all else. It says that only a part of you is good and the other parts are bad, so deny those parts. Society doesn’t accept you as a whole, as a unity; it accepts only certain parts. Hence, the conditioning.

Religion is always destructive; in a way, religion is always antisocial. But society is very cunning. It tries to convert religion also into its managerial system. It wants to make religion also a part of it.

Jesus is rebellious, the church is not. Jesus is against society – he has to be, because he is trying to destroy the mechanical part and he is trying to free your spontaneity. He is bound to be against the society; the society will crucify him. But just by crucifying him you cannot destroy Jesus. Really, if you want to destroy Jesus, crucifixion will be of no help. You will have to organize a church around Jesus; only then will he be destroyed.

It is said that once it happened that the devil was very much disturbed because one man had achieved enlightenment on earth. He called his advisers and he asked them, “What to do now? One man has again achieved truth, he has become enlightened, and our whole profession is now in danger. What to do? How to prevent people from going to this man?”

The oldest follower of the devil said, “Do not be disturbed. We should go and we should organize a church around him. Do not worry. Then the church will become the prevention, then people will not be able to come to him directly. The church will be in between, and whatsoever he says will not be heard by the people directly. The church will first interpret it, and through interpretation you can destroy anything.”

Truth can be destroyed most easily if you order it, organize it. When religion becomes a sect, it becomes a part of society. Whenever religion is alive and not a sect, it is against society. Jesus is against society, Mahavira is against society, Buddha is against society. But Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, they are all parts of society. They are religions no more. Religion has to be rebellious. And this is the rebellion: religion tries to destroy the mechanicalness because the mechanicalness is your hell. Spontaneity is your heaven; mechanicalness is your hell.

I am not going to give you any new pattern – neither new nor old. I am simply going to destroy the pattern and leave you alone to live without a pattern. A life without a pattern is a religious life. A life without any forced order is a religious life. A life without any discipline, but with inner awareness, is a religious life.

-Osho

From The Supreme Doctrine, Discourse #7

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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.

 

Your Body has to Release Many Poisons – Osho

The first few days of active meditation tend to tighten muscles, causing pain everywhere. Is there any way to get over that?

Go on doing it! You will get over it – and the reasons are obvious. There are two reasons. First, it isa vigorous exercise and your body has to get attuned to it. So for three or four days you will feel that the whole body is aching. With any new exercise it will happen. But after four days you will get over it and your body will feel stronger than ever.

But this is not very basic. The basic thing goes deeper, and the basic thing is what modern psychologists have come to know. Your body is not simply physical. In your body, in your muscles, in the structure of your body, many other things have entered through suppressions. If you suppress anger, the poison goes into the body. It goes into the muscles; it goes into the blood. If you suppress anything, it is not only a mental thing, it is also physical – because you are not really divided. You are not body and mind; you are bodymind – psychosomatic. You are both together. So whatsoever is done with your body reaches to the mind and whatsoever is done with the mind reaches to the body, as body and mind are two ends of the same entity.

For instance, if you get angry what happens to the body? Whenever you get angry certain poisons are released into the blood. Without those poisons you will not get mad enough to be angry. You have particular glands in the body, and those glands release certain chemicals. Now this is scientific, this is not just a philosophy. Your blood becomes poisoned.

That is why, when you are angry, you can do something which you cannot do ordinarily – because you are mad. You can push a big rock: you cannot do it ordinarily. You cannot even believe afterwards that you could have pushed this rock or thrown it or lifted it. When you are back to normal again, you will not be capable of lifting it again because you are not the same. Particular chemicals were circulating in the blood. You were in an emergency condition; your total energy was brought to be active.

But when an animal gets angry, he gets angry. He has no morality about it, no teaching about it. He simply gets angry and the anger is released. When you get angry, you get angry in a way similar to any animal. But then there is society, morality, etiquette, and thousands of things. You have to push the anger down. You have to show that you are not angry; you have to smile – a painted smile! You have to create a smile, and you push the anger down. What is happening to the body? The body was ready to fight – either to fight or to fly, to escape from the danger, either to face it or escape from it. The body was ready to do something: anger is just a readiness to do something. The body was going to be violent, aggressive.

If you could be violent and aggressive, then the energy would be released. But you cannot be – it is not convenient, so you push it down. Then what will happen to all those muscles which were ready to be aggressive? They will become crippled. The energy pushes them to be aggressive, and you push them backwards not to be aggressive. There will be a conflict. In your muscles, in your blood, in your body tissues, there will be conflict. They are ready to express something and you are pushing them not to express. You are suppressing them. Then your body becomes crippled.

And this happens with every emotion. And this goes on day after day for years. Then your body becomes crippled all over. All the nerves become crippled. They are not flowing, they are not liquid, they are not alive. They have become dead; they have become poisoned. And they have all become entangled. They are not natural.

Look at any animal and see the grace of the body. What happens to the human body? Why is it not so graceful? Why? Every animal is so graceful: why is the human body not so graceful? What has happened to it? You have done something with it: you have crushed it and the natural spontaneity of its flow has gone. It has become stagnant. In every part of your body there is poison. In every muscle of your body there is suppressed anger, suppressed sexuality, suppressed greed – and everything – suppressed jealousy, hatred. Everything is suppressed there. Your body is really diseased.

So when you start meditating, all these poisons will be released. And wherever the body has become stagnant, it will have to melt, it will become liquid again. And this is a great effort. After forty years of living in a wrong way, then suddenly meditating, the whole body is in an upheaval. You will feel aching all over the body. But this aching is good, and you have to welcome it. Allow the body to become again a flow. Again, it will become graceful and childlike; again, you will gain the aliveness. But before that aliveness comes to you the dead parts have to be straightened and this is going to be a little painful.

Psychologists say that we have created an armor around the body and that armor is the problem. If you are allowed total expression when you get angry what will you do? When you get angry, you start crushing your teeth together; you want to do something with your nails and with your hands, because that’s how your animal heritage will have it. You want to do something with your hands, to destroy something.

If you don’t do anything your fingers will become crippled; they will lose the grace, the beauty. They will not be alive limbs. And the poison is there. So when you shake hands with someone, really there is no touch, no life, because your hands are dead.

You can feel this. Touch a small child’s hand – a subtle difference is there. When the child really gives you his hand . . . if he is not giving, then it is alright – he will withdraw. He will not give you a dead hand, he will simply withdraw. But if he wants to give you his hand, then you will feel that his hand is as if it is melting into your hand. The warmth, the flow – as if the whole child has come to the hand. The very touch, and he expresses all the love that it is possible to express.

But the same child when grown up will shake hands as if a hand is just a dead instrument. He will not come in it, he will not flow through it. This has happened because there are blocks. Anger is blocked . . . really, before your hand becomes alive again to express love, it will have to pass through agony, it will have to pass through a deep expression of anger. If the anger is not released, that anger is blocking and love cannot come out of it.

Your whole body has become blocked, not only your hands. So you can embrace someone, you can take someone near your chest, but that is not synonymous with taking someone near your heart. These are two different things. You can take someone near your chest: this is a physical phenomenon. But if you have an armor around your heart, a blocking of emotions, then the person remains as distant as he ever was; no intimacy is possible. But if you really take a person near, and there is no armor, no wall between you and the person, then the heart will melt into the other. There will be a meeting, a communion.

Your body has to release many poisons. You have become toxic, and you will have pain – mm? – because those poisons have settled down. Now I am creating a chaos again. This meditation is to create chaos within you so that you can be rearranged – so that a new arrangement becomes possible. You must be destroyed as you are, only then can the new be born. As you are, you have gone totally wrong. You have to be destroyed and only then can something new be created. There will be pain, but this pain is worthwhile.

So go on doing the meditation and allow the body to have pain. Allow the body not to resist; allow the body to move into this agony. This agony comes from your past but it will go. If you are ready it will go. And when it goes, then for the first time you will have a body. Right now, you have only an imprisonment, a capsule, dead. You are encapsulated; you do not have an agile, alive body. Even animals have more beautiful, more alive bodies than you. […]

We have done much violence to our bodies. So in this chaotic meditation I am forcing your bodies to be alive again. Many blocks will be broken; many settled things will become unsettled again; many systems will become liquid again. There will be pain, but welcome it. It is a blessing and you will come over it. Continue! There is no need to think what to do. You simply continue the meditation. I have seen hundreds and hundreds of people passing through the same process. Within a few days the pain is gone. And when the pain is gone, you will have a subtle joy around your body.

You cannot have it right now because the pain is there. You may know it or you may not know it but the pain is there all over your body. You have simply become unconscious about it because it has always been with you. Whatsoever is always there, you become unconscious about. Through meditation you will become conscious and then the mind will say, “Don’t do this; the whole body is aching.” Do not listen to the mind. Simply go on doing it.

Within a certain period the pain will be thrown out. And when the pain is thrown out, when your body has again become receptive and there is no block, no poisons around it, you will always have a subtle feeling of joy wrapped around you. Whatsoever you are doing or not doing, you will always feel a subtle vibration of joy around your body.

Really, joy only means that your body is in a symphony, nothing else – that your body is in a musical rhythm, nothing else. Joy is not pleasure; pleasure has to be derived from something else. Joy is just to be yourself – alive, fully vibrant, vital. A feeling of a subtle music around your body and within your body, a symphony – that is joy. You can be joyful when your body is flowing, when it is a riverlike flow.

It will come but you will have to pass through suffering, through pain. That is part of your destiny because you have created it. But it goes. If you do not stop in the middle, it goes. If you stop in the middle, then the old settlement will be there again. Within four or five days you will feel okay – just the old, as you have always been. Be aware of that okayness.

-Osho

From The Supreme Doctrine, Discourse #5, Q2

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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.

One Secret I Will Tell You – Osho

Man is a periphery but also a center. Man is a circumference but not only that. Your body is your circumference but not you. […] The body is just your abode, just a house – not even a home, just a house. You are in it, but you are not it. But the mind believes itself to be the body. That is known as adhyasa, illusion, projection.

Why does this mind take the body as identical with it, as one with it? The nearness, the constant nearness, the intimacy between the two, and the body begins to be reflected in the mirror of the mind. Constant association – not only in this life, but of many lives – and by and by you become one with that which has been in association with you. It becomes a habit.

For millions of years consciousness has existed in bodies, and because of that, it is identified with the body. This identification is the only error, the only ignorance, the only sin. For the Eastern approach, this is the original sin, to be identified with the body. How to be non-identified again? How to be aware that you are not your body, you are not your mind? How to go in and find the forgotten center? It is always there, you are standing on it; you are it! But your eyes, your senses have taken you far away; you have gone on a journey.

This journey is very miraculous; it is like a dream journey. You sleep in Mt. Abu, and in the night, you dream you are in London, or in New York, or in Calcutta. You have gone on a journey in the mind. The journey appears to be actual, real. You cannot remember in your dream that this is a dream. The moment you remember this is a dream, the dream will be broken. This is a basic condition of the dream, that you should not remember it as a dream. The dream must be taken as reality; only then the dream can continue, that’s the basic condition. The dream must appear as real; otherwise, it is broken.

So in the night when you dream, the dream appears not only real but really more than real. Real life seems pale before it; the dream is more colorful, more intense, more alive. You can go on a journey in the dream and still you continue to be here in Mt. Abu. In reality you remain in Mt. Abu, but in the dream you have moved. Nothing has moved; only the mind has moved.

The whole world, for the Eastern mind, is just a dream journey – you go on moving. You remain constantly at the center, but you go on moving to the periphery, to the circumference. You look at some beautiful face, some proportionate body . . . it appeals; the mind has moved. Now you are not at your center, you are not at your home; you have gone away. Now you will follow, your mind will move. Any desire is a movement; any motivation is a movement – a movement of the mind.

You see a beautiful car, or you see a rich palace, and the mind starts desiring, you start moving. You remain at the center, but the mind is not there. You have forgotten the center; now the mind is attached with the objects of desire. Those objects of desire become your clinging. That’s why the mind goes on and on, out and out – and you are at the center. This creates a division; this divides you in two. And because you never return to the center, you never go back to it, ultimately you forget that you have a center.

The more civilized, the more cultured, the more educated the world becomes, the more it is centerless. Everyone is just a circumference – the master is missing. The house is there; the center is not there. And even if you try to reach the center you cannot reach it because you don’t know how to reach it. And the ways and the means you try to reach it really are not means and ways. They are barriers because you try to reach the center in the same way as you reach the circumference. You know only one way: how to move to the circumference, how to desire.

You desire riches, you desire power, you desire facts – you desire so many things. The mechanism of desire is that you desire something which you have not. You desire something which can become possible only in the future, never in the present! Desire is meaningful only in reference to the future. You cannot desire immediately, here and now; you will need time. Desire needs time to move. So you desire for tomorrow. You say, “Tomorrow,” or “In the next life this will happen. This I would like to happen; I hope for it.” Desire is basically future oriented, and desire means something which you don’t have.

This mechanism, if you apply it to the inner journey, will become a barrier. This mechanism cannot help because the basic situation differs; not only differs, it is absolutely diametrically opposite. Your being, your center is not something to be achieved in the future, it is here and now. It is already the case – you can have it immediately! No time is needed to move to it; really, no movement is needed. Just an awareness and you are there. You have not moved away, you are just unaware. You have not gone anywhere so that you have to come back. You have never gone in reality, only in dream.

You are sleeping in Mt. Abu and dreaming of London, and someone suddenly wakes you. Will you be awake in London or in Mt. Abu? Or will you say, “Wait, I am in London, and now I need to come back to Mt. Abu?” No, from a dream, if you are awakened, you are suddenly here. The dream world, the dream journey disappears completely. You have not come back because you have never gone away.

Your being, your center is here and now.

It cannot be made the object of desire. You cannot desire it, and if you desire it, you will miss.

Your very desire will become the barrier.

Lao Tzu says, “Do not seek; otherwise, you will miss. Do not seek, and find.” This looks absurd! Do not seek and find, looks illogical; it is not. It looks illogical because we know only one logic: the logic of desire. If someone says, “Do not seek riches and you will find,” it is illogical, you will never find. If someone says, “Don’t long for worldly things and you will find them,” nonsense; you will never find them. You will have to seek; then too, it is difficult to find them.

But it is not illogical for the inner journey. Note it, understand it deeply: the inner journey is just the reverse – from the center to the periphery, this is the way. Create an object of desire and then move toward it – just the reverse is the way which goes in. Don’t create any object of desire and don’t move – and you will reach it because you are already there.

Any movement anywhere, and you will miss your center. No movement and you are there, suddenly awakened.

Because we know only one logic, one method to reach a certain thing, we go on applying it toward the inner journey. That creates hindrances – they are self-created. Nothing is to be done to reach the center. I repeat, nothing is to be done to reach the center – it is there. If you can be in a non-doing moment, you will find it. Or, we can say:

Non-doing is the doing for the center.

Non-desiring is the way for the inner center.

Just being, not becoming, is the gaining of it.

But the mind will ask, “What to do?” Even if I say, “Don’t do anything,” the mind will constantly go on asking, “But how? How not to do anything? What to do to achieve this non-doing, this non-action? How is it to be achieved?” And “how” means that something is to be done.

So one secret I will tell you.

All the techniques of meditation, and the one which we will be doing just after the talk – all the techniques are really just toys to play with because the mind goes on asking, “What to do?” So the technique supplies you: Do this. By that doing you are not going to reach the center, but by that doing, suddenly you will be exhausted. Suddenly, totally moving in that doing, the doing will stop. As I said last night, you cannot be angry totally. If you try to be totally in anger, anger will disappear and compassion will arise. You cannot be in hate totally. If you hate totally, at the climax, hate will disappear and love will arise. You can try to be in love totally; the same will happen.

If you do, in no doing can you be total – your being remains out of it. You go on doing a certain thing, your being remains out of it, it can never be total. You walk – can you walk totally? You cannot because at a certain inner point is non-walking; it will never walk. Even if you go on to the moon, it will never go anywhere; it will remain there inside, just sitting there.

That’s why if you love and your love is an act, an action, then your love, too, cannot be total. If you are “doing” love, if you are making love, love cannot be total. Because no action can be total – the being remains out. The love can be total only if you become love. It is not a doing; you are love. You are not making love, your very being is love. That’s why hate cannot be total because your being can never become hate. You can hate someone, but your being can never become hate; your being can become love.

No doing, no action can be total.

Only being can be total.

So I will suggest a method to do, and the trick – I may be allowed to call it a trick – and the trick is this: that if you go totally into it, suddenly a moment will come when all doing will cease, all effort will cease. And you will be thrown back to your center, and there will be no doing, no effort – simple existence, innocent existence, just being. […]

Meditation is not doing something. But you cannot take a jump immediately into non-doing. So I suggest that you make your doing total. Move into it so deeply and so totally that suddenly the doing drops, and you alone are left, just existing.

Just like a tree – of course aware, but just like a tree.

Just like a flower – aware, but just like a flower, existing.

Just like a stream flowing – aware, but just like a stream.

No mind, just you alone, no thoughts.

When there are no thoughts, you cannot move from the center. You move through thoughts. Thoughts are the way toward the periphery, and no-thought is dropping back to the center.

Now I will tell you something about the technique we are going to use.

Four steps. First step, ten minutes fast, chaotic breathing with no system. This is not a yoga exercise . . . chaotic, anarchic. Why? – because if you use any systematic breathing, any rhythm, the mind can control it. Mind can control any system. Mind is the great systematizer, so we are here to break the systems, the system of the mind. So breathe chaotically, like a madman – fast. Take the breath in as much as you can and throw it out – fast, with no rhythm; so that the mind is just shocked. And breathing is a great device to shock the mind.

You must remember that with every emotion breathing changes. And every emotion has its own system of breathing. When you are in love, breathing is relaxed; when you are angry, breathing can never be relaxed. When you hate someone, breathing is different; when you are in compassion, breathing is different. When you are at ease, breathing is so silent that you cannot even feel it; when you are tense, breathing cannot be silent – you can feel it.

This chaotic breathing belongs to no emotion. So simply by doing it you transcend emotions, the mechanism of the mind. And the mind is just thrown off; it cannot continue. Ten minutes of mad, fast breathing.

The second step is a deep catharsis. You have to throw yourself out – the mind has to be thrown out. Laugh – but madly, totally; cry, weep or whatsoever comes to your mind – but madly. Jump, dance, do whatsoever comes to you; and if nothing is coming then too, try something, because mind is a long suppression. So sometimes you feel nothing is coming, start; choose anything – laugh, cry, scream, jump, dance – but do something; don’t just stand there. Do something, and whatsoever you are doing, do it exaggeratedly.

The second step you must throw away your whole civilization, your whole culture. Just be like children with no fear – the fear of the others. Your eyes are to be closed; you have to use a blindfold.

In the third, when all the nonsense that is suppressed is thrown out, when all the madness is thrown out, you have to use a mantra. The mantra is the sound of “hoo, hoo” – meaningless. It is just a sound with no meaning attached to it – just “hoo.” It is not “w-h-o”; it is “h-o-o, h-o-o.” Loudly you have to make it; […] and move in it totally, so that you are exhausted completely.

And in the fourth step, you are not to do anything.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #36

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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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These are Simply Cleansing Methods – Osho

The Western mind is very speedy, fast, because the conditioning is for only one life – seventy years – and so much to do. One third of your life goes into sleep, one third of your life goes into education, training – what is left?

Much of it goes into earning your livelihood. If you count everything, you will be surprised: out of seventy years you cannot even have seven years left for something that you want to do. Naturally there is hurry, a mad rush, so mad that one forgets where one is going. All that you remember is whether you are going with speed or not. The means becomes the end.

In the same way, in different directions . . . the Eastern mind has cultivated itself differently than the Western mind. Those one hundred and twelve methods of meditation developed in the East have never taken account of the Western man; they were not developed for the Western man. The Western man was not yet available. The time that Vigyan Bhairava Tantra was written – in which those one hundred and twelve techniques have come to perfection – is nearabout five to ten thousand years before us.

At that time there was no Western man, no Western society, no Western culture. The West was still barbarous, primitive, not worth taking into account. The East was the whole world, at the pinnacle of its growth, richness, civilization.

My methods of meditation have been developed out of an absolute necessity. I want the distinction between the West and the East to be dissolved.

After Shiva’s Vigyan Bhairava Tantra, in these five or ten thousand years, nobody has developed a single method. But I have been watching the differences between East and West: the same method cannot be applied immediately to both. First, the Eastern and the Western mind have to be brought into a similar state. Those techniques of dynamic meditation, kundalini meditation, and others, are all cathartic; their basis is catharsis.

You have to throw out all the junk that your mind is full of. Unless you are unloaded you cannot sit silently. It is just as if you tell a child to sit silently in the corner of the room. It is very difficult; he is so full of energy. You are repressing a volcano! The best way is, first tell him, “Go run outside around the house ten times; then come and sit down in the corner.” Then it is possible, you have made it possible. He himself wants to sit down now, to relax. He is tired, he is exhausted; now, sitting there, he is not repressing his energy, he has expressed his energy by running around the house ten times. Now he is more at ease.

The cathartic methods are simply to throw all your impatience, your speediness, your hurry, your repressions.

One more factor has to be remembered, that these are absolutely necessary for the Western man before he can do something like vipassana – just sitting silently doing nothing and the grass grows by itself. But you have to be sitting silently, doing nothing – that is a basic condition for the grass to grow by itself. If you cannot sit silently doing nothing, you are going to disturb the grass. […]

So these methods are absolutely necessary for the Western mind. But a new factor has also entered: they have become necessary for the Eastern mind too. The mind for which Shiva wrote those one hundred and twelve methods of meditation no longer exists – even in the East now. The Western influence has been tremendous. Things have changed.

So now my methods are applicable to both. I call them preliminary methods. They are to destroy everything that can prevent you from going into a silent meditation. Once dynamic meditation or kundalini meditation succeeds, you are clean. You have erased repressiveness. You have erased the speediness, the hurry, the impatience. Now it is possible for you to enter the temple.

It is for this reason that I spoke about the acceptance of sex, because without the acceptance of sex, you cannot get rid of repression. And I want you to be completely clean, natural. I want you to be in a state where those one hundred and twelve methods can be applicable to you. This is my reason for devising these methods – these are simply cleansing methods.

-Osho

From Light on the Path #16, Q1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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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Waiting with Full Awareness – Osho

What is meditation?

Now this is strange. It reminds me of a story.

A cricket fan took his girlfriend for a date – it was a full moon night, and the beach was silent, and they were sitting on the beach, and it was beautiful. They were holding hands and hugging each other. And the cricket fan continued to talk about cricket for three hours. Then, suddenly he became aware that he must be boring the girl. Three hours is too long! So he said, “Sorry, forgive me. I have been talking for three hours about my hobby. I am a fan; I am mad about cricket. I must have bored you utterly?”

The girl said, “Not at all, not at all. But do tell me what is cricket?”

Now you ask, “What is meditation?” and my whole life I have been talking about meditation. But still, I understand why the question arises. You listen, but you can’t get it. You understand intellectually what meditation is, but still, it remains elusive. You cannot catch hold of it. And you cannot catch hold of it!

It is not that something is wrong with you. Meditation cannot be caught hold of, you have to allow it to happen so that it can catch hold of you. Meditation is not something that you have to do; meditation is something for which you have to wait! It is something that comes and comes on its own. It is like a breeze. It is not that you can pull it in, that you can manage and order it. You cannot order anything that is valuable. Ordered things are ordered things.

You cannot order God. So meditation, satori, samadhi, enlightenment, nirvana, God – they cannot be ordered. The very idea is silly. You cannot order. You can receive. Certainly, you can receive. You can invite, you can wait in patience. So whenever you are feeling happy, whenever you are feeling joyous, whenever you are feeling harmonious, in tune, then just sit silently. Wait for it. Just wait for it! Nothing else is needed to be done.

Meditation is not an action. You just wait. Relax and wait. Lie down or sit or stand – as you feel good – and wait for it. Wait, alert, and soon you will hear the whisperings, the silent steps of something which is coming closer to you. Soon you will see something is entering into your heart, into your being. You cannot see it, but it is there. You can feel it. It is like a fragrance that fills your nostrils. It is like light. Keep the window open. That’s all you need to do; just keep the window open, so when the light arises and the clouds are not there and the sun is high, the rays can enter in you. About meditation you can do only negative things. Keep the door open, keep the eyes open, keep yourself alert, and it comes. It certainly comes. It immediately starts flowing in you. It is a benediction. You cannot pull; you cannot manipulate it. A manipulated meditation will not be of any value. That’s what people are doing. Somebody is doing TM, somebody is doing something else – trying to manipulate.

Here, when you are doing the Chaotic [Dynamic] Meditation or the Kundalini or the Nadabrahma, these are not really meditations, you are just getting in tune. If you have seen them, it is like Indian classical musicians playing. For half an hour, or sometimes even more, they simply go on fixing their instruments. They will move the knobs, they will make the strings tight or loose, and the drum player will go on checking his drum – whether it is perfect or not. For half an hour they go on doing this. This is not music; this is just preparation.

Kundalini is not really meditation; it is just preparation. You are preparing your instrument. When it is ready, then you stand in silence. Then meditation starts. Then you are utterly there. You have woken yourself up by jumping, by dancing, by breathing, by shouting – these are all devices to make you a little more alert than you ordinarily are. Once you are alert, then the waiting.

Waiting is meditation – waiting with full awareness. And then it comes, it descends on you, it surrounds you, it plays around you, it dances around you, it cleanses you, it purifies you, it transforms you.

-Osho

From I Say Unto You, V.2, Discourse #6, Q8

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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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They will Remove the Barriers – Osho

Why are methods needed when releasement can happen instantly, herenow? I am so tired of trips. How many more must I try only to find they don’t work either? I know the problem is in me and I know there is no problem. So now what?

Celebrate now. Sing, dance, love, be.

You say: Why are methods needed when releasement can happen instantly, herenow?

Because you cannot trust me, that’s why. You cannot trust me. I go on declaring that you are Buddhas, already enlightened, but you are skeptical about it. You can believe – that too very grudgingly – that a Gautam Buddha may have become enlightened, maybe, perhaps. A Jesus became enlightened, maybe. You can grudgingly concede that much, but to concede that you are enlightened is too much. You cannot give such a gift to yourself: you are so against yourself; you are so condemnatory toward yourself. You can immediately accept it if somebody says that you are a sinner. Just think of it; if somebody says you are a sinner, you are ready to bow down. Even if on the surface you deny it, deep down you know that he is right because from the very beginning you have been taught – you have been poisoned – that you are a sinner. The teaching has gone into your very blood and bones and marrow; it has become part of you that ‘you are a sinner’. All the religions of the world have been teaching this; for centuries, generations upon generations have been doing only one work: condemning man.

You are not even aware of the self-condemnation that you have for yourself, the hate that you have for yourself. You don’t love yourself, how can you allow yourself to be a Buddha?

Releasement can happen this moment, but you won’t allow it, hence methods are needed. If people can trust me, then there is no need for any method. The method is not going to help the releasement. Let me remind you, the method is only going to help you trust me. So I send you into therapy groups. Teertha and Divya and Siddha and Amitabh and Pradeepa – these people will work on you. They will help only one thing: they will help you to trust me.

The whole function of therapy groups here is totally different than it is in the West; it has a totally different meaning and significance. It is to create trust, it is to create a little love for yourself, it is to create acceptance. Then I send you into meditations; those meditations are cathartic.

A cathartic meditation is just throwing all the repressed energy that is boiling in you, that won’t allow you to trust. Dynamic, Kundalini, and others will take away much energy that hinders; it will be released. Slowly, slowly you will become capable of trusting. It is only because of lack of trust that methods have to be invented. If you trust already, then there is no need for any method.

You ask me: Why are methods needed when releasement can happen instantly, herenow?

Releasement will always happen instantly; whether it happens today or tomorrow it will always happen instantly, suddenly. It is a sudden experience, a lightning, and the whole past disappears; you are abruptly cut from the past, you become discontinuous with it. The old disappears and the new is born. And the new is not a modification of the old; it has no relationship with the old, it is simply unrelated with the old. The old has not caused it either, it is not an effect of the old; it is utterly unrelated with the old.

Krishnamurti has been saying the same thing for at least fifty years, but nothing much has happened. He goes on saying that it is possible just now – be aware, be awake. And people go on listening, because the problem is they cannot trust Krishnamurti that this can be just now. Their minds are spinning and weaving inside, “This is not possible – how can it be possible? What will happen to my past karmas? I have to undo them. And what about all the crimes and the sins I have committed? I have to be punished for them. And what about the Judgement Day? How can it happen right now?” Deep inside these unconscious rumblings go on and on. And you go on listening . . .

Seeing the failure of Krishnamurti, I have invented methods. I am saying essentially the same thing, because the message cannot be different. But I had to invent methods so that they can destroy your mistrust. Methods will help you to become unblocked; they will help you to become more flowing; they will help you to be less frozen – they will melt you; they will warm up the process of your being.

Releasement is going to happen instantly, any moment it is going to happen. But if you are ready, it can happen this very moment – not even a single moment more do you have to wait.

Why are methods needed when releasement can happen instantly, herenow?

Because of you, not because of me. From my side I am very much puzzled why it is not happening to you. It should happen, why is it not happening? Why do you go on listening without understanding it? Why do you listen only intellectually? Why can’t you listen from the heart, from your totality? It is a constant wonder to me – a miracle – that people can go on listening every day and can remain the same, hence the methods. The methods are not for the releasement, you are not going to become enlightened through any meditation, no; nobody has ever become enlightened through any meditation, but the meditations help. In a negative way they help; they remove the rocks and the stream starts flowing. They don’t create the stream; they can’t create it – how can rocks create the stream? They have nothing to do with the nature of the stream, but they can prevent it.

Because there are things which are preventing you from trusting the moment, trusting God, trusting life, trusting existence, you are shrunk in fear, in doubt. In doubt and fear you have armored yourself just to be secure, safe; you have created a great armor around yourself. Your body is no more an opening to existence; it has become closed. Your windows, your doors, are all closed. The sun rises – yes, the sun rises in the evening – but it cannot penetrate in you. It goes on rising, it goes on knocking on your door, but the knock is subtle – so subtle, so silent, that you cannot hear it in your noisy mind, in that constant chatter that goes on inside you.

These methods are negative methods; they will not give you enlightenment, but they will remove the barriers. And once the barriers are removed, once all the barriers are removed, enlightenment happens. It is nothing that you have to achieve; when you are available . . . the release, the liberation.

You say: I am so tired of trips.

Really? I don’t think so. If one is really tired, then one’s trips are finished. You are still hoping – maybe there is still some trip, some way of tripping so that you can attain. You are still hoping. You are looking out of the corner of the eye. “Maybe I have failed ninety-nine times; but who knows? I may succeed the hundredth time. I have failed up to now, but who knows? I may be trying the wrong methods, and there may be some right method. I have failed because I may have been with wrong Masters, and there may be some right Master. I have failed because I have not put all of my energy into it; if I put all of my energy into it I may succeed. I have failed because the time was not ripe for it and now the time may be ripe.” And a thousand and one excuses you can always find when you want to go on a new trip. If you are really tired, then who is preventing you? Then forget all about trips, relax, celebrate, be.

I am so tired of trips. How many more must I try only to find they don’t work either?

Nothing ever works; nothing has ever worked, because nothing is needed for it to work. Life is going perfectly well – there is no need to do anything whatsoever. But this vision comes slowly, slowly, when you have failed again and again and again. It sinks in very slowly. Our minds are very stubborn, hard, rock-like; they are not soft soil – they don’t allow anything to sink in easily. Hence sometimes it takes lives for a person to realize that nothing ever works. And that is a great moment when one realizes that nothing ever works, nothing can work. “My whole effort to attain was absolutely wrong from the very beginning. It was wrong because what I am trying to achieve is already the case. It is wrong because I am searching and it is already there inside me.”

All efforts are meaningless. If a person is intelligent, he will understand it soon. If he is not intelligent, he will take a little longer; it depends on your intelligence. A very intelligent person, attentive, alert, aware, will see the point in a single moment; with a single blow his head will disappear. He will see the point and all is finished – all misery, all hell, all search.

I am so tired of trips, you say. How many more must I try only to find they don’t work either?

It all depends on you. You can make a trip out of me.

Now, the question is from Hal Duggan, and he is taking sannyas on the twentieth. It depends on you; that too can become a trip. From my side it is not; it is the end of all trips. It is just a declaration that enough is enough. Sannyas is a declaration that “I am not going into any more trips”, that all methods have failed, and all paths have failed, that all paths lead astray, that “I am not going to be caught into any method, into any path, anymore.” Sannyas is a renunciation of all methods, all paths, all trips – psychedelic or otherwise.

But you can also make sannyas a trip – it depends on you – and then you will miss again. Sannyas is not a trip. It is the realization that all trips are bound to fail. It is coming out of all trips; it is coming home. It is realizing the fact that you don’t waste your energy and time in searching for anything anymore; you don’t go on waiting for anything to happen in the future, because it is already happening – it has always been happening. Dance, sing, celebrate, be.

God is, he has not to be searched for. God already is, you are not to discover him. All you have to do is dance a mad dance, you have to dance in such a mad way that all the doors are thrown open. You have to sing with such totality that the ego dissolves into that totality. You have to be in prayer, in gratitude, with such passion and intensity that the whole starts flowing toward you; your waiting becomes a magnetic field.

Sannyas is not a trip. So, Hal Duggan, remember it, it is not a trip. Don’t reduce sannyas to a trip.

I am not a trip. I am not here to create new bondages for you, I am here to make you free, totally free. That’s why I don’t give you any discipline, I give you only awareness. That’s why I don’t give you any character, I give you only alertness. And out of alertness if a character arises, good. And out of awareness a character certainly arises, but a very fluid and flowing character. It is not a fixed mode of life, because all modes are dead, stagnant. A character arises out of consciousness, but the consciousness goes on changing, so the character goes on changing; the consciousness goes on reflecting each moment the new reality that is happening, and the character goes on corresponding to the new reality that is happening. There is continuous adjustment, spontaneous adjustment, between you and the whole.

The people who have fixed characters are always maladjusted, because they have a fixed character, and life has no fixed character. God is characterless, and if you have a character, you will never meet God, because your character will confine you into a certain strait jacket; you will become a stereotype, you will not be a living being anymore; you will be a noun not a verb.

God is a verb not a noun. God is a process, a dynamism; and a man of character, the so-called man of character, is dull, dead. He has to be dull and dead, because if he were aware he would have to see the changes that are happening around him and he would have to change accordingly. He has to remain drugged in his unconsciousness, he has to remain fixed with his character because he is always afraid that something may happen and he may have to change his character. He does not want to change his character so he goes on remaining unaware of all that is changing. He also creates a society which is unchanging. That’s why in the East the society has remained unchanging; it is because of the so-called ‘character obsession’. If a man has to have a fixed character, then the society has also to be a fixed pattern; only then will he be adjusted, otherwise there will be difficulty.

In the East thousands of years have passed and things have remained almost the same; they have not changed – they have not been allowed to change because then there is fear. And that’s what is happening in the West now: because things are changing, people are losing character, and the Western religious leaders are very much worried. Life is changing fast; science has released so many energies that life goes on changing. And one has to change with it, one has to keep pace with life. And if one has to keep pace with life, one cannot stay in a fixed mode. It is very easy to live in an Indian village and remain in a fixed mode; it is very difficult to live in New York with a fixed mode of life – you have to be more fluid.

So the Eastern people think that Western people don’t have any character. What the reality is, in fact, is that the West has become more alive, more changing, and the East is still dull and dead, fixated, obsessed and afraid. “If anything changes on the outside then I will have to change inside too, because my inside has to correspond with the outside.”

Small changes bring difficulties. For example, since electricity came to India, many Jainas have started eating in the night. Now, for centuries they have not eaten in the night – they had a fixed mode – but when electricity came, suspicions arose, doubts arose. Now, what is the problem? Electricity is there, light is there – there is no fear of any insect or any ant entering into your food; you will not be killing anything. Now in the night you can have more light than you have in the day, so many Jainas started eating in the night. Now, what is the problem? And when one thing falls, then other things start falling, because everything is connected; all things are connected with each other. If you can eat in the night and Mahavir is wrong about it, maybe he is wrong about other things too.

That’s why the church has been fighting against science, because it creates suspicion. The church has believed that the earth is flat, and then science started saying it is not flat, it is a globe. Now, if Jesus is wrong about one thing, why can’t he be wrong about other things? Then he is no more infallible; suspicion will arise. He may be wrong about God too, he may be wrong about the Judgement Day, he may be absolutely wrong, who knows? because he is fallible.

Religions have always insisted that nothing should change; these religions are all in the service of death. I am giving you a totally new vision: a religion of life not of death, a religion of intelligence not of stupidity, a religion of dynamism not of stagnancy, a religion which will keep you flowing with the flow of the total and will not in any way hold you back from the movement of the total. It will keep you in tune with the whole. I don’t give a character to you, I only give consciousness. My whole emphasis is on consciousness.

Sitting is Zen, walking is Zen, talking is Zen, being silent is Zen. All should be only awareness. Awareness should be your God. Let awareness be the only fundamental law, and then you will be out of all trips; otherwise, it is difficult. You can go on changing from one trip to another. A Christian can become a Hindu; this is just changing the train – the trip remains. A Hindu can become a Christian, and nothing changes, only words; he will not go to the temple, he will go to the church.

And the same can be done with me too but remember that will be your responsibility. I can also become a trip to you. I don’t want to become a trip to you; I want to become a liberation to you. From my side I want you to be liberated, but still, your cooperation will be needed. The very idea of liberation, and you can catch hold of it and make a trip out of it. And your mind is very, very efficient in making trips out of everything. Beware.

Hal Duggan, on the twentieth you are going to become a sannyasin. Remember, this is not a trip, this is the end of all trips. Let it be the end of all trips. How long are you going to journey and journey and journey? Now, come home. Now, come to rest. Enough of the trips. Learn from me how to rest, how to relax, how to be.

-Osho

From The Sun Rises in the Evening, Discourse #8, Q3

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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Your Intensity, Your Wholeness is Your Witness – Osho

Can one be absorbed in doing something – for instance, these dynamic mediation techniques – with absolute total intensity and at the same time remain a witness who is separate, apart?

The same is the problem in many forms. You think that a witness is something apart, separate. It is not. Your intensity, your wholeness, is your witness. So when you are witnessing and doing something you are not two – the doer is the witness.

For example, you are dancing here in kirtan. You are dancing: the dancer and the witness are not two, there is no separation. The separation is only in language. The dancer is the witness. And if the dancer is not the witness, then you cannot be total in the dance, because the witness will need some energy and you will have to divide yourself. A part will remain a witness and the remaining will move in the dance. It cannot be total; it will be divided. And this is not what is meant, because really this is the state of a schizophrenic patient – divided, split. It is pathological. If you become two you are ill. You must remain one. You must move totally into the dance, and your totality will become the witness. It is not going to be something set apart, your wholeness is aware. This happens.

So don’t try to divide yourself. While dancing become the dance. Just remain alert; don’t fall asleep, don’t be unconscious. You are not under a drug, you are alert, fully alert. But this alertness is not a part standing aloof; it is your totality, it is your whole being.

But this is again the same thing as whether two lovers are two or one. Only on the surface are they two, deep inside they are one. Only in language will you appear two, the dancer and the witness, but deep down you are the one. The whole dancer is alert. Then only peace, equilibrium, silence, will happen to you. If you are divided there will be tension, and that tension will not allow you to be totally here and now, to merge into existence.

So remember that, don’t try to divide. Become the dancer and still be aware. This happens. This I am saying through my experience. This I am saying through many others’ experience who have been working with me. This will happen to you also. This may have happened to many already. But remember this: don’t get split. Remain one and yet aware.

Enough for today.

-Osho

From Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi, Discourse #11, Q3

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

For a related post see Q2, Love Becomes the Door.

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.

 

 

 

Osho Speaks on Nadabrahma Meditation

It is a mantra meditation, and mantra is one of the most potential ways. It is very simple yet tremendously effective, because when you chant a mantra, or you chant a sound your body starts vibrating; your brain cells particularly start vibrating.

If rightly done your whole brain becomes tremendously vibrant, and the whole body also. Once the body starts vibrating and your mind is already chanting, they both fall in a tune. A harmony – which is ordinarily never there – between the two. Your mind goes on its way, your body continues on its own. The body goes on eating, the mind goes on thinking. The body goes on walking on the road, the mind is moving far away in the stars. They never meet – they both go on separate pathways, and that creates a split.

The basic schizophrenia is created because the body goes in one direction, the mind goes in another direction. And you are the third element – you are neither the body nor the mind, so you are pulled apart by these two. Half of your being is pulled by the body and half of your being is pulled by your mind. So there is great anguish – one feels torn apart.

In a mantra meditation – Nadabrahma or any chanting – this is how the mechanism works: when you start chanting a sound – and any sound will do; even abracadabra – if you start resounding inside, the body starts responding. Sooner or later a moment comes when the body and the mind are both together in one direction for the first time. When body and mind are both together, you are free from the body and the mind – you are not torn apart. Then the third element which you are in reality – call it soul, spirit, atma, anything – that third element is at ease because it is not being pulled in different directions.

The body and the mind are so much engrossed in chanting that the soul can slip out of them very easily, unobserved, and can become a witness – can stand out and look at the whole game that is going on between the mind and the body. It is such a beautiful rhythm that the mind and body never become aware that the soul has slipped out . . . because they don’t allow so easily, mm? They keep their possession. Nobody wants to lose his possession. The body wants to dominate the soul, the mind wants to dominate the soul. This is a very sly way to get out of their hold. They become drunk with the chanting, and you slip out.

So in Nadabrahma, remember this: let the body and mind be totally together, but remember that you have to become a witness. Get out of them, easily, slowly, from the back door, with no fight, with no struggle. Mm? they are drinking – you get out and watch from the outside . . . This is the meaning of the English word ‘ecstasy’ – to stand out. Stand out and watch from there . . . and it is tremendously peaceful. It is silence, it is bliss, it is benediction.

This is the whole secret of chanting – that’s why chanting has prevailed down the centuries. There has never been a religion that has not used chanting and mantra. But there is a danger also! If you don’t get out, if you don’t become a witness, there is a danger – then you have missed the whole point. If you become drunk with the body and the mind and your soul also becomes drunk, then chanting is an intoxicant. Then it is like a tranquillizer – it will give you a good sleep, that’s all. It is a lullaby. Good – nothing wrong in it – but not of any real value either.

So this is the pitfall to be remembered: chanting is so beautiful that one wants to get lost. If you are lost, then good, you enjoyed a rhythm, an inner rhythm, and it was beautiful and you liked it, but it was like a drug – it is an acid trip. By chanting, by the sound, you created certain drugs in your body.

Chanting creates chemical changes in the body, and those changes are no different than marijuana or LSD. Someday, when research goes deeper into meditation, they are going to find that chanting creates chemical changes – just as fasting also creates chemical changes. After the seventh or eighth day of fasting, one feels tremendously jubilant, weightless, very glad for no reason, delighted – as if all burden has disappeared. Your body is creating a certain chemical change.

I am as much against LSD as I am against fasting. And if chanting is used as a drug, I am against it. So the point to be remembered is that you have to use the sound, the chanting, the mantra, not as an intoxicant for your being. Let it be an intoxicant for the body and the mind, but you slip out of it before you become intoxicated; you stand out and you watch. You see the body swaying and you see the mind feeling very, very peaceful and calm and quiet. Watch from the outside and be alert like a flame.

If this is not done you will have a good sleep but nothing more. Then it is a good thing for health but nothing for the ultimate growth.

Good – pay attention to Nadabrahma, mm? And sometimes sitting silently, start chanting anything, ‘aum’, will do, or choose anything, any word, and get in tune with it. Meaning is not important: it can be meaningless – it can be meaningful. ‘Aum’ has no meaning. Or you can create your own mantra and chant it. But remember to slip out of it.

Let the body get drunk, let the mind get drunk, let them fall into a deep love affair with each other, and you slip out of it. Don’t stay there longer – otherwise you will fall asleep. And if one falls asleep, it is not meditation. Meditation means awareness. So remember it!

-Osho

From The Buddha Disease, Chapter 31

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Also see OSHO Nadabrahma Meditation

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.

Awareness and Relaxation – Osho

Relaxation has always been one of the most valuable states of being for me. “Watchfulness” seems to be possible only then, or at least so much easier. Beloved Master, would you like to comment on how “relaxation” is connected to “awareness”?

Sadhan, they are not only connected with each other, they are almost two sides of the same coin. You cannot separate them. Either you can begin with awareness, and then you will find yourself relaxing . . . What is your tension? Your identification with all kinds of thoughts, fears, death, bankruptcy, the dollar going down . . . all kinds of fears are there. These are your tensions, and they affect your body also. Your body also becomes tense, because body and mind are not two separate entities. Body-mind is a single system, so when the mind becomes tense, the body becomes tense.

You can start with awareness; then awareness takes you away from the mind and the identifications with the mind. Naturally, the body starts relaxing. You are no more attached, and tensions cannot exist in the light of awareness.

You can start from the other end also. Just relax . . . let all tensions drop . . . and as you relax you will be surprised that a certain awareness is arising in you. They are inseparable. But to start from awareness is easier; to start with relaxation is a little difficult, because even the effort to relax creates a certain tension. […]

Hence, in the East we have never started meditation from relaxation; we have started meditation from awareness. Then relaxation comes on its own accord, you don’t have to bring it. If you have to bring it there will be a certain tension. It should come on its own; then only will it be pure relaxation.

And it comes . . . […]

There are political, religious, sociological, economic problems, all torturing you. To begin with relaxation is difficult; hence, in the East we have never started from relaxation. But if you want to, I have a certain idea how you should start. I have been working with my Western sannyasins and I have become aware of the fact that they don’t belong to the East and they don’t know the Eastern current of consciousness; they are coming from a different tradition which has never known any awareness.

For the Western sannyasins especially, I have created meditations like dynamic meditation. While I was taking camps of meditators, I used a gibberish meditation and the kundalini meditation. If you want to start from relaxation, then these meditations have to be done first. They will take out all tensions from your mind and body, and then relaxation is very easy. You don’t know how much you are holding in, and that that is the cause of tension. […]

So there are two kinds of tension, the body tensions and the mind tensions. Both have to be released before you can start relaxation, which will bring you to awareness. But beginning from awareness is far easier, and particularly for those who can understand the process of awareness, which is very simple. The whole day you are using it about things – cars, in the traffic – even in the Poona traffic you survive! It is absolutely mad. […]

You are using awareness without being aware of it, but only about outside things. It is the same awareness that has to be used for the inside traffic. When you close your eyes there is a traffic of thoughts, emotions, dreams, imaginations; all kinds of things start flashing by.

What you have been doing in the outside world, do exactly the same with the inside world and you will become a witness. And once tasted, the joy of being a witness is so great, so other-worldly that you would like to go more and more in. Whenever you find time, you would like to go more and more in.

It is not a question of any posture; it is not a question of any temple, of any church or synagogue. Sitting in a public bus or in a railway train, when you have nothing to do just close your eyes. It will save your eyes being tired from looking outside, and it will give you time enough to watch yourself. Those moments will become moments of the most beautiful experiences.

And slowly, slowly, as awareness grows your whole personality starts changing. From unawareness to awareness is the greatest quantum leap.

-Osho

From Satyam Shivam Sundram, #25, Q2

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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.