Category: on Tantra

Surrender and 112 Meditation Techniques – Osho

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #2

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.

A Bridge to No-body – Osho

Truth is always here. It is already the case. It is not something to be achieved in the future. You are the truth just here and now, so it is not something which is to be created or something which is to be devised or something which is to be sought. Understand this very clearly; then these techniques will be easy to understand and also to do.

Mind is a mechanism of desiring. Mind is always in desire, always seeking something, asking for something. Always the object is in the future; mind is not concerned with the present at all. In this very moment the mind cannot move – there is no space. The mind needs the future in order to move. It can move either in the past or in the future. It cannot move in the present; there is no space. The truth is in the present, and mind is always in the future or in the past, so there is no meeting between mind and truth.

When the mind is seeking worldly objects, it is not so difficult, the problem is not absurd; it can be solved. But when the mind starts seeking the truth the very effort becomes nonsense, because the truth is here and now, and the mind is always then and there. There is no meeting. So understand the first thing: you cannot seek truth. You can find it, but you cannot seek it. The very seeking is the hindrance.

The moment you start seeking you have moved away from the present, away from yourself, because you are always in the present. The seeker is always in the present and the seeking is in the future, you are not going to meet whatsoever you are seeking. Lao Tzu says, “Seek not; otherwise you will miss. Seek not and find. Don’t seek and find.”

All these techniques of Shiva’s are simply turning the mind from the future or the past to the present. That which you are seeking is already there, it is the case already. The mind has to be turned from seeking to non-seeking. It is difficult. If you think about it intellectually it is very difficult. How to turn the mind from seeking to non-seeking? – because then the mind makes non-seeking itself the object! Then the mind says, “Don’t seek.” Then the mind says, “I should not seek.” Then the mind says, “Now non-seeking is my object. Now I desire the state of desirelessness.” The seeking has entered again, the desire has come again through the back door. That is why there are people who are seeking worldly objects, and there are people who think they are seeking non-worldly objects. All objects are worldly because “seeking” is the world.

So you cannot seek anything non-worldly. The moment you seek, it becomes the world. If you are seeking God, your God is part of the world. If you are seeking moksha – liberation – nirvana, your liberation is part of the world, your liberation is not something that transcends the world, because seeking is the world, desiring is the world. So you cannot desire nirvana, you cannot desire non-desire. If you try to understand intellectually, it will become a puzzle.

Shiva says nothing about it, he immediately proceeds to give techniques. They are non-intellectual. He doesn’t say to Devi, “The truth is here. Don’t seek it and you will find it.” He immediately gives techniques. Those techniques are non-intellectual. Do them, and the mind turns. The turning is just a consequence, just a by-product – not an object. The turning is just a by-product.

If you do a technique, your mind will turn from its journey into the future or the past. Suddenly you will find yourself in the present. That is why Buddha has given techniques, Lao Tzu has given techniques, Krishna has given techniques. But they always introduce their techniques with intellectual concepts. Only Shiva is different. He immediately gives techniques, and no intellectual understanding, no intellectual introduction, because he knows that the mind is tricky, the most cunning thing possible. It can turn anything into a problem. Non-seeking will become the problem.

There are people who come to me who ask how not to desire. They are desiring non-desire. Somebody has told them, or they have read somewhere, or they have heard spiritual gossip that if you do not desire you will reach bliss, if you do not desire you will be free, if you do not desire there will be no suffering. Now their minds hanker to attain that state where there is no suffering, so they ask how not to desire. Their minds are playing tricks. They are still desiring, it is only that now the object has changed. They were desiring money, they were desiring fame, they were desiring prestige, they were desiring power. Now they are desiring non-desire. Only the object has changed, and they remain the same and their desiring remains the same. But now the desire has become more deceptive.

Because of this, Shiva proceeds immediately with no introduction whatsoever. He immediately starts talking about techniques. Those techniques, if followed, suddenly turn your mind: it comes to the present. And when the mind comes to the present, it stops; it is no more. You cannot be a mind in the present; that is impossible. Just now, if you are here and now, how can you be a mind? Thoughts cease because they cannot move. The present has no space in which to move; you cannot think. If you are in this very moment, how can you move? Mind stops, you attain to no-mind.

So the real thing is how to be here and now. You can try, but effort may prove futile – because if you make it a point to be in the present, then this point has moved into the future. When you ask how to be in the present, again you are asking about the future. This moment is passing in the inquiry, “How to be present? How to be here and now?” This present moment is passing in the inquiry, and your mind will begin to weave and create dreams in the future: some day you will be in a state of mind where there is no movement, no motive, no seeking, and then there will be bliss – so how to be in the present?

Shiva doesn’t say anything about it, he simply gives a technique. You do it, and suddenly you find you are here and now. And your being here and now is the truth, and your being here and now is the freedom, and your being here and now is the nirvana.

The first nine techniques are concerned with breathing. So let us understand something about breathing, and then we will proceed to the techniques. We are breathing continuously from the moment of birth to the moment of death. Everything changes between these two points. Everything changes, nothing remains the same, only breathing is a constant thing between birth and death.

The child will become a youth; the youth will become old. He will be diseased, his body will become ugly, ill, everything will change. He will be happy, unhappy, in suffering; everything will go on changing. But whatsoever happens between these two points, one must breathe. Whether happy or unhappy, young or old, successful or unsuccessful – whatsoever you are, it is irrelevant – one thing is certain: between these two points of birth and death you must breathe.

Breathing will be a continuous flow; no gap is possible. If even for a single moment you forget to breathe, you will be no more. That is why you are not required to breathe, because then it would be difficult. Someone might forget to breathe for a single moment, and then nothing could be done. So, really, you are not breathing, because you are not needed. You are fast asleep, and breathing goes on; you are unconscious, and breathing goes on; you are in a deep coma, and breathing goes on. YOU are not required; breathing is something which goes on in spite of you.

It is one of the constant factors in your personality – that is the first thing. It is something which is very essential and basic to life – that is the second thing. You cannot be alive without breath. So breath and life have become synonymous. Breathing is the mechanism of life, and life is deeply related with breathing. That is why in India we call it prana. We have given one word for both – prana means the vitality, the aliveness. Your life is your breath.

Thirdly, your breath is a bridge between you and your body. Constantly, breath is bridging you to your body, connecting you, relating you to your body. Not only is the breath a bridge to your body, it is also a bridge between you and the universe. The body is just the universe which has come to you, which is nearer to you.

Your body is part of the universe. Everything in the body is part of the universe – every particle, every cell. It is the nearest approach to the universe. Breath is the bridge. If the bridge is broken, you are no more in the body. If the bridge is broken, you are no more in the universe. You move into some unknown dimension; then you cannot be found in space and time. So, thirdly, breath is also the bridge between you, and space and time.

Breath, therefore, becomes very significant – the most significant thing. So the first nine techniques are concerned with breath. If you can do something with the breath, you will suddenly turn to the present. If you can do something with breath, you will attain to the source of life. If you can do something with breath, you can transcend time and space. If you can do something with breath, you will be in the world and also beyond it.

Breath has two points. One is where it touches the body and the universe, and another is where it touches you and that which transcends the universe. We know only one part of the breath. When it moves into the universe, into the body, we know it. But it is always moving from the body to the “no-body,” from the “no-body” to the body. We do not know the other point. If you become aware of the other point, the other part of the bridge, the other pole of the bridge, suddenly you will be transformed, transplanted into a different dimension.

But remember, what Shiva is going to say is not yoga, it is tantra. Yoga also works on breath, but the work of yoga and tantra is basically different. Yoga tries to systematize breathing. If you systematize your breathing, your health will improve. If you systematize your breathing, if you know the secrets of breathing, your life will become longer; you will be more healthy and you will live longer. You will be stronger, more filled with energy, more vital, alive, young, fresh.

But tantra is not concerned with that. Tantra is concerned not with any systematization of breath, but with using breath just as a technique to turn inward. One has not to practice a particular style of breathing, a particular system of breathing or a particular rhythm of breathing – no! One has to take breathing as it is. One has just to become aware of certain points in the breathing.

There are certain points, but we are not aware of them. We have been breathing and we will go on breathing – we are born breathing and we will die breathing – but we are not aware of certain points.

And this is strange. Man is searching, probing deep into space. Man is going to the moon; man is trying to reach farther, from earth into space, and man has not yet learned the nearest part of his life. There are certain points in breathing which you have never observed, and those points are the doors – the nearest doors to you from where you can enter into a different world, into a different being, into a different consciousness. But they are very subtle.

To observe a moon is not very difficult. Even to reach the moon is not very difficult; it is a gross journey. You need mechanization, you need technology, you need accumulated information, and then you can reach it. Breathing is the nearest thing to you, and the nearer a thing is, the more difficult it is to perceive it. The nearer it is, the more difficult; the more obvious it is, the more difficult. It is so near to you that again there is no space between you and your breathing. Or, there is such a small space that you will need a very minute observation, only then will you become aware of certain  points. These points are the basis of these techniques.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #3

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Osho describes the first technique here Between Two Breaths.

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 online from Amazon.com and in the U.S. from OshoStore-Sedona and Osho Here and Now.

The Last Technique – Osho

This is the last technique Osho gives in The Book of Secrets. With the first techniques he begins with watching the breath and onto developing the witness, he continues through 112 techniques in total, introducing many doors into our interiority, and then finally, he leaves us here in our utter aloneness.

Enter space, supportless, eternal, still. 

Three qualities of space have been given in this technique. Supportless: there can be no support in space. Eternal: it can never end. Still: it will be soundless, it will be silent. Enter this space, it is within you.

But the mind always asks for support. People come to me and if I say to them, “Just sit silently, with closed eyes, and don’t do anything,” they say, “Give me some avalamban, some support. Give me some mantra as a support, because I cannot sit.” Just sitting is difficult. If I give them a mantra, it is okay. They can go on repeating the mantra. Then it is easy. With support you are never empty, that’s why it is easy. Something must go on, you must be doing something. Doing, the doer remains: doing, you are filled. You may be filled with aumkar, aum, Ram, Jesus, Ave Maria, anything – you may be filled with anything, but you are filled. Then you are okay Mind resists emptiness. It wants always to be filled by something else, because if it is filled it can be. If it is not filled it will disappear. In emptiness you will attain no no-mind. That’s why mind asks for support.

If you want to enter inner space, don’t ask for support. Drop all supports, mantras, gods, scriptures, whatsoever gives you a support. If you feel you are supported, drop it, and just move inside – supportless. It will be fearful; you will feel scared. You are moving to where you can be lost completely. You may not be able to come back because all supports will be lost. Your contact with the bank is lost and where this river will lead you, no one knows. Your support is lost. You may fall into an infinite abyss. Hence, fear grips you, and you ask for some support. Even if it is a false support, you enjoy it. Even a false support is helpful. Because for the mind it makes no difference whether a support is real or false – it must be a support, that’s the point. You are not alone, something is there and supporting you.

It happened once that a man came to me. He was living in a house where he felt there were spirits and ghosts. And he was very worried. Through worries, he started seeing more illusions. Through worries, he became ill, weak. His wife said, “If you live any longer in this house, I am leaving.” His children were sent to some relative’s house.

The man came to me and he said, “It has become very difficult now. I see them clearly. They walk in the night. The whole house is filled with spirits. You help me.” So I gave him one of my pictures and said, “Take it. Now I will tackle those spirits. You simply sleep silently, you need not worry. Really, I will tackle them, I will see to them. Now it is my business. And don’t interfere. Now you need not be concerned.” The man came the next day. He said, “I slept, it was so beautiful! You have done a miracle!”

And I had not done anything but give a support. Through support the mind was filled. It was no longer vacant; someone was there.

In ordinary life you are leaning on many false supports, but they help. And unless you become strong enough, you will need them. That’s why I say that this is the ultimate technique – no support.

Buddha was dying and Anand asked him, “Now you are leaving us, what shall we do? How shall we attain? How shall we proceed now? When the master is gone, we will be wandering in darkness for many, many lives. No one is there to lead us, to guide us, the light is going out.” So Buddha said, “It will be good for you. When I am no more, you become your own light. Move alone, don’t ask for any support, because support is the last barrier.”

And it happened. Anand had not become enlightened. For forty years he was with Buddha, he was the closest disciple, he was just like a shadow to Buddha, moving with him, living with him; he had had the longest contact with him. For forty years Buddha’s compassion was falling over him, raining over him – for forty years. But nothing happened, Anand remained as ignorant as ever. And the day after Buddha died, Anand became enlightened – the next day, the very next day. The very support had been the barrier. When there was no more Buddha, Anand could not find any support. It is difficult. If you live with a Buddha, and the Buddha goes, then no one can be a support to you. Now no one will be worth clinging to. One who has been clinging to a Buddha cannot cling to anybody else in this world. This whole world will be vacant. Once you have known a Buddha and his love and compassion, then no love, no compassion can compare. Once you have tasted that, nothing else is worth tasting. So Anand was alone for the first time in forty years, totally alone. There was no way to find a support. He had known the highest support; now lower supports would not do. The next day he became enlightened. He must have moved into the inner space, supportless, eternal, still.

So remember, don’t try to find any support. Be supportless. If you are trying to do this technique, then be supportless. That is what Krishnamurti is teaching, “Be supportless. Don’t cling to a master.  Don’t cling to anything.”

That is what every master has been doing. A master’s whole effort is first to attract you towards him, so that you start clinging to him. When you start clinging to him, when you become close and intimate with him, then he knows that the clinging must be cut. And you cannot cling to anyone else now – that is finished. You cannot move to anyone else – that is impossible. Then he cuts the clinging and suddenly you are left supportless.

Enter space, supportless, eternal, still. 

That space has no beginning, no end. And that space is absolutely soundless. There is nothing – not even a sound vibrating, not even a ripple. Everything is still.

That point is just within you. Any moment you can enter it. If you have the courage to be supportless, this very moment you can enter it. The door is open. The invitation is for all, all and everyone. But courage is needed; courage to be alone, courage to be empty, courage to dissolve and melt, courage to die. And if you can die within to your inner space, you will attain to the life which never dies, you will attain to amrit, to immortality.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse 79

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairav Tantra)

Here you can listen to the complete meditation technique Enter Space, Supportless, Eternal, Still.

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation

Osho’s discourses on the meditation techniques of Vigyan Bhairav Tantra

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.

As Breath Turns from Down to Up – Osho

The second technique – all these nine techniques are concerned with breath.

As breath turns from down to up, and again as breath curves from up to down – Through both these turns, realize.

It is the same, but with a slight difference. The emphasis is now not on the gap, but on the turning. The outgoing and ingoing breath make a circle. Remember, these are not two parallel lines. We always think of them as two parallel lines – breath going in and breath going out. Do you think that these are two parallel lines? They are not. Breath going in is half the circle; breath going out is the other half of the circle.

So understand this: first, breathing in and out creates a circle. They are not parallel lines, because parallel lines never meet anywhere. Secondly, the breath coming in and the breath going out are not two breaths, they are one breath. The same breath which comes in, goes out, so it must have a turn inside. It must turn somewhere. There must be a point where the incoming breath becomes outgoing.

Why put such emphasis upon turning? Because, Shiva says, As breath turns from down to up, and again as breath curves from up to down – Through both these turns, realize. Very simple, but he says: realize the turns and you will realize the self.

Why the turn? If you know driving you know about gears. Each time you change the gear, you have to pass through the neutral gear, which is not a gear at all. From the first gear you move to the second or from the second to the third, but always you have to move through the neutral gear.

That neutral gear is a turning point. In that turning point the first gear becomes the second and the second becomes the third. When your breath goes in and turns out, it passes through the neutral gear; otherwise it cannot turn out. It passes through the neutral territory. In that neutral territory you are neither a body nor a soul, neither physical nor mental, because the physical is a gear of your being and the mental is another gear of your being. You go on moving from gear to gear, but you must have a neutral gear where you are neither body nor mind. In that neutral gear you simply are: you are simply an existence – pure, simple, unembodied, with no mind.

That is why there is the emphasis on the turn. Man is a machine – a large, very complicated machine. You have many gears in your body, many gears in your mind. You are not aware of your great mechanism, but you are a great machine. And it is good that you are not aware; otherwise you could go mad. The body is such a great machine that scientists say if we had to create a factory parallel to the human body, it would require four square miles of land, and the noise would be such that one hundred square miles of land would be disturbed by it.

The body is a great mechanical device – the greatest. You have millions and millions of cells and each cell is alive. So you are a big city of seventy million cells; there are seventy million citizens inside you, and the whole city is running very silently, smoothly. Every moment the mechanism is working. It is very complicated. These techniques will be related at many points with the mechanism of your body and the mechanism of your mind. But always the emphasis will be on those points where suddenly you are not part of the mechanism – remember this. Suddenly you are not part of the mechanism. There are moments when you change gears.

For example, in the night when you drop into sleep you change gears, because during the day you need a different mechanism for a waking consciousness – a different part of the mind functions. Then you drop into sleep, and that part becomes non-functioning. Another part of the mind begins to function, and there is a gap, an interval, a turning. A gear is changed. In the morning when you are again getting up, the gear is changed. You are silently sitting, and suddenly someone says something and you get angry – you move into a different gear. That is why everything changes.

If you get angry, your breathing will suddenly change. Your breathing will become irritated, chaotic. A trembling will get into your breathing; you will feel suffocated. Your whole body would like to do something, shatter something, only then can the suffocation disappear. Your breathing will change; your blood will take a different rhythm, a different movement. Different chemicals will have to be released in the body, the whole glandular system will have to change. You become a different man when you are angry.

A car is standing . . . you start it. Do not put it in any gear, let it be in neutral. It will go on pulling, vibrating, trembling, but it cannot move; it will get hot. That is why, when you are angry and you cannot do something, you will get hot. The mechanism is ready to run and do something and you are not doing – you will get hot. You are a mechanism, but, of course, not only a mechanism. You are more, but the “more” has to be found. When you get into a gear, everything changes inside. When you change the gear, there is a turning.

Shiva says,

As breath turns from down to up, and again as breath curves from up to down – Through both these turns, realize.

Be aware at the turn. But it is a very short turn; very minute observation will be needed. And we are just without any observing capacity; we cannot observe anything. If I say to you, “Observe this flower; observe this flower which I give to you,” you cannot observe it. For a single moment you will see it, and then you will begin to think of something else. It may be about the flower, but it will not be the flower. You may think about the flower, about how beautiful it is – then you have moved. Now the flower is no more in your observation, your field has changed. You may say that it is red, it is blue, it is white . . . then you have moved. Observation means remaining with no word, with no verbalization, with no bubbling inside – just remaining with. If you can remain with a flower for three minutes, completely, with no movement of the mind, the thing will happen – the beneficence. You will realize.

But we are not at all observers. We are not aware, we are not alert; we cannot pay attention to anything. We just go on jumping. This is part of our heritage, our monkey heritage. Our mind is just the growth of the monkey mind, so the monkey moves on. He goes on jumping from here to there. The monkey cannot sit still. That is why Buddha insisted so much on just sitting without any movement, because then the monkey mind is not allowed to go on its way.

In Japan they have a particular type of meditation which they call Zazen. The word “zazen” in Japan means just sitting, doing nothing. No movement is allowed. One is just sitting like a statue – dead, not moving at all. But there is no need to sit like a statue for years together. If you can observe the turn of your breath without any movement of the mind, you will enter. You will enter into yourself or into the beyond within.

Why are these turnings so important? They are important because on turning, the breath leaves you to move in a different direction. It was with you when it was coming in; it will be with you again when it goes out. But at the turning point it is not with you, and you are not with it. In that moment, the breath is different from you, and you are different from it: if breathing is life, then you are dead; if breathing is your body, then you are no-body; if breathing is your mind, then you are no-mind . . . in that moment.

I wonder whether you have observed it or not: if you stop your breath, the mind stops suddenly. If you stop your breath just now, your mind will stop suddenly; the mind cannot function. A sudden stoppage of breath and the mind stops. Why? Because they are disjoined. Only a moving breath is joined with the mind, with the body; a non-moving breath is disjoined. Then you are in the neutral gear. The car is running, the power is on, the car is making a noise – it is ready to go forward – but it is not in gear, so the body of the car and the mechanism of the car are not joined. The car is divided into two. It is ready to move, but the moving mechanism is not joined with it.

The same happens when breath takes a turn. You are not joined with it. In that moment you can easily become aware of who you are. What is this being? What is it to be? Who is inside this house of the body? Who is the master? Am I just the house or is there some master also? Am I just the mechanism or does something else also penetrate this mechanism? In that turning gap, Shiva says, realize. He says just be aware of the turning, and you become a realized soul.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #3

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt As Breath Turns from Down to Up.

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditations.

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)

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.

Attention Between Eyebrows – Osho

When one of the great Greek philosophers, Pythagoras, reached Egypt to enter a school – a secret esoteric school of mysticism – he was refused. And Pythagoras was one of the best minds ever produced. He could not understand it. He applied again and again, but he was told that unless he goes through a particular training of fasting and breathing he cannot be allowed to enter the school.

Pythagoras is reported to have said, “I have come for knowledge, not for any sort of discipline.” But the school authorities said, “We cannot give you knowledge unless you are different. And really, we are not interested in knowledge at all, we are interested in actual experience. No knowledge is
knowledge unless it is lived and experienced. So you will have to go on a forty-day fast, continuously breathing in a certain manner, with a certain awareness on certain points.”

There was no other way, so Pythagoras had to pass through this training. After forty days of fasting and breathing, aware, attentive, he was allowed to enter the school. It is said that Pythagoras said, “You are not allowing Pythagoras in. I am a different man, I am reborn. You were right and I was
wrong, because then my whole standpoint was intellectual. Through this purification, my center of being has changed. From the intellect it has come down to the heart. Now I can feel things. Before this training I could only understand through the intellect, through the head. Now I can feel. Now
truth is not a concept to me, but a life. It is not going to be a philosophy, but rather, an experience – existential.”

What was that training he went through? This fifth technique was the technique that was given to Pythagoras. It was given in Egypt, but the technique is Indian.

Attention between eyebrows, let mind be before thought. Let form fill with breath essence to the top of the head and there shower as light.

This was the technique given to Pythagoras. Pythagoras went with this technique to Greece, and really, he became the fountainhead, the source of all mysticism in the West. He is the father of all mysticism in the West.

This technique is one of the very deep methods. Try to understand this: Attention between eyebrows . . . Modern physiology, scientific research, says that between the two eyebrows is the gland which is the most mysterious part of the body. This gland, called the pineal gland, is the third eye of the Tibetans – shivanetra: the eye of the Shiva, of the tantra. Between the two eyes there exists a third eye, but it is non-functioning. It is there, it can function any moment, but it does not function naturally. You have to do something about it to open it. It is not blind; it is simply closed.

This technique is to open the third eye.

Attention between eyebrows . . . Close your eyes, then focus both of your eyes just in the middle of the two eyebrows. Focus just in the middle, with closed eyes, as if you are looking with your two eyes. Give total attention to it.

This is one of the simplest methods of being attentive. You cannot be attentive to any other part of the body so easily. This gland absorbs attention like anything. If you give attention to it, both your eyes become hypnotized with the third eye. They become fixed; they cannot move. If you are trying to be attentive to any other part of the body it is difficult. This third eye catches attention, forces attention; it is magnetic for attention. So all the methods all over the world have used it. It is the simplest to train you in attention because not only are you trying to be attentive, the gland itself helps you; it is magnetic. Your attention is brought to it forcibly. It is absorbed.

It is said in the old tantra scriptures that for the third eye attention is food. It is hungry; it has been hungry for lives and lives. If you pay attention to it, it becomes alive. It becomes alive! The food is given to it. And once you know that attention is food, once you feel that your attention is magnetically drawn, attracted, pulled by the gland itself, attention is not a difficult thing then. One has only to know the right point. So just close your eyes, let your two eyes move just to the middle, and feel the point. When you are near the point, suddenly your eyes will become fixed. When it becomes difficult to move them, then know you have caught the right point.

Attention between eyebrows, let mind be before thought . . . If this attention is there, for the first time you will come to experience a strange phenomenon. For the first time you will see thoughts running before you; you will become the witness. It is just like a film screen: thoughts are running, and you are a witness. Once your attention is focused at the third eye center, you become immediately the witness of thoughts.

Ordinarily you are not the witness, you are identified with thoughts. If anger is there, you become anger. If a thought moves, you are not the witness; you become one with the thought, identified, and you move with it. You become the thought; you take the form of the thought. When sex is there you become sex, when anger is there you become anger, when greed is there you become greed. Any thought moving becomes identified with you. You do not have any gap between you and the thought.

But focused at the third eye, suddenly you become a witness. Through the third eye you become the witness. Through the third eye you can see thoughts running like clouds in the sky or people moving on the street.

You are sitting at your window looking at the sky or at people in the street; you are not identified. You are aloof, a watcher on the hill – different. Now if anger is there, you can look at it as an object. Now you do not feel that you are angry. You feel that you are surrounded by anger – a cloud of anger has come around you – but you are not the anger. And if you are not the anger, anger becomes impotent, it cannot affect you; you remain untouched. The anger will come and go and you will remain centered in yourself.

This fifth technique is a technique of finding the witness. Attention between  eyebrows, let mind be before thought. Now look at your thoughts; now encounter your thoughts. Let form fill with breath essence to the top of the head and there shower as light. When attention is focused at the third eye center, between the two eyebrows, two things happen. One is, suddenly you become a witness.

This can happen in two ways. You become a witness and you will be centered at the third eye. Try to be a witness. Whatsoever is happening, try to be a witness. You are ill, the body is aching and painful, you have misery and suffering, whatsoever – be a witness to it. Whatsoever is happening, do not identify yourself with it. Be a witness, an observer. Then if witnessing becomes possible, you will be focused in the third eye.

The vice versa is the case also. If you are focused in the third eye, you will become a witness. These two things are part of one. So the first thing: by being centered in the third eye there will be the arising of the witnessing self. Now you can encounter your thoughts. This will be the first thing. And the second thing will be that now you can feel the subtle, delicate vibration of breathing. Now you can feel the form of breathing, the very essence of breathing.

First try to understand what is meant by “the form,” by “the essence of breathing.” While you are breathing, you are not only breathing air. Science says you are breathing only air – just oxygen, hydrogen, and other gases in their combined form of air. They say you are breathing air! But tantra says that air is just the vehicle, not the real thing. You are breathing prana – vitality. Air is just the medium; prana is the content. You are breathing prana, not only air.

Modern science is still not able to find out whether there is something like prana, but some researchers have felt something mysterious. Breathing is not simply air. It has been felt by many modern researchers also. In particular, one name is to be mentioned – Wilhelm Reich, a German psychologist who called it “orgone energy.” It is the same thing as prana. He says that while you are breathing, air is just the container and there is a mysterious content which can be called orgone or prana or elan vital. But that is very subtle. Really, it is not material. Air is the material thing – the container is material – but something subtle, non-material, is moving through it.

The effects of it can be felt. When you are with a very vital person, you will feel a certain vitality arising in you. If you are with a very sick person, you will feel sucked, as if something has been taken out of you. When you go to the hospital, why do you feel so tired? You are being sucked from everywhere. The whole hospital atmosphere is ill, and everyone there needs more elan vital, more prana. So if you are there, suddenly your prana begins to flow out of you. Why do you feel suffocated sometimes when you are in a crowd? Because your prana is being sucked. While you are alone under the sky in the morning, under the trees, suddenly you feel a vitality in you – the prana. Each person needs a particular space. If that space is not given, your prana is sucked.

Wilhelm Reich did many experiments, but he was thought to be a madman. Science has its own superstitions, and science is a very orthodox thing. Science cannot feel yet that there is anything more than air, but India has been experimenting with it for centuries.

You may have heard, or you may have even seen someone going into samadhi, cosmic consciousness – underground samadhi – for days together, with no air penetrating. One man went into such underground samadhi in Egypt in 1880 for forty years. Those who had buried him all died, because he was to come out of his samadhi in 1920, forty years afterwards. In 1920, no one believed that they would find him alive, but he was found alive. He lived afterwards for ten years more. He had become completely pale, but he was alive. And there had been no possibility of air reaching to him.

He was asked by medical doctors and others, “What is the secret of it?” He said, “We do not know. We only know this, that prana can enter and flow anywhere.” Air cannot penetrate, but prana can penetrate. Once you know that you can suck prana directly, without the container, then you can go into samadhi for centuries even.

By being focused in the third eye, suddenly you can observe the very essence of breath – not breath, but the very essence of breath, prana. And if you can observe the essence of breath, prana, you are at the point from where the jump, the breakthrough happens.

The sutra says, Let form fill with breath essence to the top of the head . . . And
when you come to feel the essence of breathing, prana, just imagine that your head is filled with it – just imagine. No need of any effort. I will explain to you how imagination works. When you are focused at the third eye center, imagine, and the thing happens – then and there.

Now your imagination is just impotent; you go on imagining and nothing happens. But sometimes, unknowingly, in ordinary life also things happen. You are imagining about your friend and suddenly there is a knock on the door. You say it is a coincidence that the friend has come. Sometimes your
imagination works just like coincidence. But whenever this happens now, try and remember and analyze the whole thing. Whenever it happens that you feel your imagination has become actual, go inside and observe. Somewhere your attention must have been near the third eye. Whenever this coincidence happens, it is not a coincidence. It looks that way because you do not know the secret science. Your mind must have moved unknowingly near the third eye center. If your attention is in the third eye, just imagination is enough to create any phenomenon.

This sutra says that when you are focused between the eyebrows and you can feel the very essence of breathing, let form fill. Now imagine that this essence is filling your whole head, particularly the top of the head, the sahasrar – the highest psychic center. And the moment you imagine, it will be filled. There – at the top of the head – shower as light. This prana essence is showering from the top of your head as light. And it will begin to shower, and under the shower of light you will be refreshed, reborn, completely new. That is what inner rebirth means.

So two things: first, focused at the third eye your imagination becomes potent, powerful. That is why so much insistence has been given on purity. Before doing these practices, be pure. Purity is not a moral concept for tantra, purity is significant – because if you are focused at the third eye and your mind is impure, your imagination can become dangerous: dangerous to you, dangerous to others. If you are thinking to murder someone, if this idea is in the mind, just imagining may kill the man. That is why there is so much insistence on being pure first.

Pythagoras was told to go through fasting, through particular breathing – this breathing – because here one is traveling in a very dangerous land. Because wherever there is power there is danger, and if the mind is impure, whenever you get power, your impure thoughts will take hold of it immediately.

You have imagined many times to kill but the imagination cannot work, fortunately. If it works, if it is actualized immediately, then it will become dangerous – not only to others, but to yourself also, because so many times you have thought to commit suicide. If the mind is focused at the third eye,
just thinking of suicide will become suicide. You will not have any time to change, immediately it will happen.

You might have observed someone being hypnotized. When someone is hypnotized, the hypnotist can say anything and immediately the hypnotized person follows. Howsoever absurd the order, howsoever irrational or even impossible, the hypnotized person follows it. What is happening? This fifth technique is at the base of all hypnotism. Whenever someone is being hypnotized, he is told to focus his eyes at a particular point – on some light, some dot on the wall or anything, or on the eyes of the hypnotist.

When you focus your eyes at any particular point, within three minutes your inner attention begins to flow toward the third eye. And the moment your inner attention begins to flow toward the third eye, your face begins to change. And the hypnotist knows when your face begins to change. Suddenly your face loses all vitality. It becomes dead, as if deeply asleep. The hypnotist knows immediately when your face has lost the luster, the aliveness. It means that now attention is being sucked by the third eye center. Your face has become dead; the whole energy is running toward the third eye center.

Now the hypnotist immediately knows that anything said will happen. He says, “Now you are falling into a deep sleep” – you will fall immediately. He says, “Now you are becoming unconscious” – you will become unconscious immediately. Now anything can be done. If he says, “Now you have
become Napoleon,” you will become. You will begin to behave like a Napoleon, you will begin to talk like Napoleon. Your gestures will change. Your unconscious will take the order and will create the actuality. If you are suffering from a disease, now it can be ordered that the disease has disappeared and it will disappear. Or any new disease can be created.

Just putting an ordinary stone from the street in your hand, the hypnotist can say, “This is fire in your hand,” and you will feel intense heat; your hand will get burned – not only in the mind, but actually. Actually your skin will get burned. You will have a burning sensation. What is happening? There is no fire, there is just an ordinary stone, cold. How? How does this burning happen? You are focused at the third eye center, your imagination is being given suggestions by the hypnotist, and they are being actualized. If the hypnotist says, “Now you are dead,” you will die immediately. Your heart will stop. It will stop.

This happens because of the third eye. In the third eye, imagination and actualization are not two things. Imagination is the fact. Imagine, and it is so. There is no gap between dream and reality. There is no gap between dream and reality! Dream, and it will become real. That is why Shankara
has said that this whole world is nothing but the dream of the divine . . . the dream of the divine! This is because the divine is centered in the third eye – always, eternally – so whatsoever the divine dreams becomes real. If you are also centered in the third eye, whatsoever you dream will become real.

Sariputta came to Buddha. He meditated deeply, then many things, many visions started coming, as it happens with anyone who goes into deep meditation. He began to see heavens, he began to see hells, he began to see angels, gods, demons. And they were actual, so real that he came running to Buddha to tell him that such and such a vision had come to him. But Buddha said, “It is nothing – just dreams. Just dreams!”

But Sariputta said, “They are so real. How can I say that they are dreams? When I see a flower in my vision it is more real than any flower in the world. The fragrance is there; I can touch it. When I see you,” he said to Buddha, “I do not see you as real. That flower is more real than your being here just before me, so how can I differentiate between what is real and what is dream?” Buddha said, “Now that you are centered in the third eye, dream and reality are one. Whatsoever you are dreaming will be real, and vice versa also.”

For one who is centered in the third eye, dreams will become real and the whole reality will become just a dream, because when your dream can become real, you know there is no basic difference between dream and reality. So when Shankara says that this whole world is just maya, a dream of the divine, it is not a theoretical proposition, it is not a philosophical statement. It is, rather, the inner experience of one who is focused in the third eye.

When you are focused in the third eye, just imagine that the essence of prana is showering from the top of the head, just as if you are sitting under a tree and flowers are showering, or you are just under the sky and suddenly a cloud begins to shower, or you are just sitting in the morning and the sun rises and rays begin to shower. Imagine, and immediately there is a shower – a shower of light falling down from the top of your head. This shower recreates you, gives you a new birth. You are reborn.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #5

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Attention Between Eyebrows.

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)

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.

When In Worldly Activity – Osho

When in worldly activity, keep attentive between the two breaths, and so practicing, in a few days, be born anew.

When in worldly activity, keep attentive between the two breaths… Forget breaths – keep attentive in between. One breath has come: before it returns, before it is exhaled out, there is the gap, the interval. One breath has gone out; before it is taken in again, the gap. In worldly activity, keep attentive between the two breaths, and so practicing, in a few days, be born anew. But this has to be done continuously. This sixth technique has to be done continuously. That is why this is mentioned: When in worldly activity.. Whatsoever you are doing, keep your attention in the gap between the two breaths. But it must be practiced while in activity.

We have discussed one technique that is just similar. Now there is only this difference that this has to be practiced while in worldly activity. Do not practice it in isolation. This practice is to be done while you are doing something else. You are eating – go on eating and be attentive of the gap. You are walking – go on walking and be attentive of the gap. You are going to sleep – lie down, let sleep come, but you go on being attentive of the gap. Why in activity? Because activity distracts the mind, activity calls for your attention again and again. Do not be distracted, be fixed at the gap. And do not stop activity, let the activity continue. You will have two layers of existence – doing and being.

We have two layers of existence: the world of doing and the world of being; the circumference and the center. Go on working on the periphery, on the circumference; do not stop it. But go on working attentively on the center also. What will happen? Your activity will become an acting, as if you are playing a part.

You are playing a part – for example, in a drama. You have become Ram or you have become Christ. You go on acting as Christ or as Ram, and still you remain yourself. In the center, you know who you are; on the periphery you go on acting as Ram, Christ or anyone. You know you are not Ram – you are acting. You know who you are. Your attention is centered in you; your activity continues on the circumference.

If this method is practiced, your whole life will become a long drama. You will be an actor playing roles, but constantly centered in the gap. If you forget the gap then you are not playing roles, you have become the role. Then it is not a drama; you have mistaken it as life. That is what we have done. Everyone thinks he is living life. It is not life, it is just a role – a part which has been given to you by the society, by the circumstances, by the culture, by the tradition, the country, the situation.

You have been given a role and you are playing it; you have become identified with it. To break that identification there is this technique.

Krishna has many names. Krishna is one of the greatest actors. He is constantly centered in himself and playing – playing many roles, many games, but absolutely non serious. Seriousness comes from identification. If you really become Ram in the drama then there are bound to be problems. Those problems will come out of your seriousness. When Sita is stolen you may get a heart attack, and the whole play will have to be stopped. If you really become Ram a heart attack is certain… even heart failure.

But you are just an actor. Sita is stolen, but nothing is stolen. You will go back to your home and you will sleep peacefully. Not even in a dream will you feel that Sita is stolen. When really Sita was stolen, Ram himself was weeping, crying and asking the trees, “Where has my Sita gone? Who has taken her?” But this is the point to understand. If Ram is really weeping and asking the trees, he has become identified. He is no more Ram; he is no more a divine person.

This is the point to remember, that for Ram his real life also was just a part. You have seen other actors playing Ram, but Ram himself was just playing a part – on a greater stage, of course.

India has a very beautiful story about it. I think that the story is unique; nowhere else in any part of the world does such a thing exist. It is said that Valmiki wrote the Ramayana before Ram was born, and then Ram had to follow. So really, the first act of Ram was also just a drama. The story was written before Ram was born and then Ram had to follow, so what can he do? When a man like Valmiki writes the story, Ram has to follow. So everything was fixed in a way. Sita was to be stolen and the war had to be fought.

If you can understand this, then you can understand the theory of destiny, bhagya – fate. It has a very deep meaning. And the meaning is, if you take it that everything is fixed for you, your life becomes a drama. If you are playing the role of Ram in the drama you cannot change it, everything is fixed, even your dialogue. If you say something to Sita it is just repeating something that is fixed.

You cannot change it if life is taken as fixed.

For example, you are going to die on a particular day – it is fixed. When you will be dying you will be weeping, but it is fixed. And such and such persons will be around you – it is fixed. If everything is fixed, everything becomes a drama. If everything is fixed, it means you are just to enact it. You are not asked to live it, you are just asked to enact it.

This technique, the sixth technique, is just to make yourself a psychodrama – just a play. You are focused in the gap between two breaths and life moves on, on the periphery. If your attention is at the center, then your attention is not really on the periphery – that is just “sub-attention”; it just happens somewhere near your attention. You can feel it, you can know it, but it is not significant. It is as if it is not happening to you. I will repeat this: if you practice this sixth technique, your whole life will be as if it is not happening to you, as if it is happening to someone else.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #5

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt When in Worldly Activity.

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)

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.

At the Start of Sneezing be Uninterruptedly Aware – Osho

At the start of sneezing, during fright, in anxiety, above a chasm, flying in battle, in extreme curiosity, at the beginning of hunger, at the end of hunger, be uninterruptedly aware. 

It looks so simple: at the start of sneezing, during fright, in anxiety or before hunger or after hunger, be uninterruptedly aware. 

Many things have to be understood. Very simple acts like sneezing can be used as devices, because howsoever simple they look, they are very complex, and the inner mechanism is a very delicate thing. Whenever you feel that a sneeze is coming become alert, and the sneeze may not come at all. It may simply disappear, because a sneeze is a non-voluntary thing – unconscious, non-voluntary.

You cannot sneeze voluntarily; you cannot “will” it. How can you? How helpless man is! You cannot “will” a single sneeze. Howsoever you may try, you cannot bring it out. A single sneeze – such a small thing, but you cannot will it. It is non-voluntary; volition is not needed. It does not happen because of your mind; it is because of your total organism, your total body.

And the second thing: when you become alert, when the sneeze is coming – you cannot bring it, but when it is coming – if you become alert, it may not come, because you are bringing something new to the process: the alertness. It may disappear, but when the sneeze disappears and you are alert, there is a third thing. First, a sneeze is non-voluntary. You bring in a new thing – alertness. When the alertness comes, the sneeze may not come. If really you are alert, it will not; it may not happen at all. Then a third thing happens. The energy that was going to be released through a sneeze, where does it move? It moves to your alertness. Suddenly there is a flash, a lightning. You become more alert. The energy, that was going to be thrown by the sneeze moves into alertness. Suddenly you become more alert.

In that flash, in that lightning, even enlightenment is possible. That is why I say that these matters are so simple, they look absurd. Their promise seems to be too much. Just through sneezing, how can one become enlightened? But sneezing is not just sneezing; you are totally involved in it.

Whatsoever you do or whatsoever happens to you is a total involvement. Observe again: whenever a sneeze happens, you are totally in it with the whole body, the whole mind. It is not just your nose in which the sneeze is happening; every fiber, every cell of your body is involved in it. A subtle trembling, a subtle wavering goes all over the body, and with it the whole body becomes concentrated. And when the sneeze has happened, the whole body relaxes. But it is difficult to bring alertness to it. If you bring alertness to it, it will not happen, and if it happens you can know that the alertness was not there. That is why you should be alert.

At the start of sneezing…, because if it has started, nothing can be done. The arrow has gone; you cannot change it now. The mechanism has started. The energy is on its way to being released, it cannot be stopped. Can you stop a sneeze in the middle? How can you stop it in the middle? By the time you are ready, it has already happened. You cannot stop it in the middle.

Just at the beginning, become alert. The moment you feel the sensation that it is coming, become alert. Close your eyes and be meditative. Bring your total consciousness to the focus just where you are feeling the sensation of an oncoming sneeze. Just at the beginning, remain alert. The sneeze will disappear, and the energy will be transformed into more alertness. And because in the sneeze the whole body is involved, the whole mechanism is involved – it is a release mechanism and you are alert at this moment – there will be no mind, there will be no thought, no meditation.

In a sneeze, thinking stops. That is why so many people like snuff. It unburdens them, their minds feel more relaxed because for a moment thinking stops. Snuff gives them a glimpse of no-thinking. Through snuff, when the sneeze comes, they are not minds, they become bodies. The head disappears for a single moment, but it feels good.

If you become habituated to snuff, it is very difficult to leave it. It is more penetrating a habit than smoking; smoking is nothing before it. It penetrates more deeply, because smoking is conscious and sneezing is unconscious. To leave snuff is more difficult than to leave smoking. And smoking can be changed, substitutes can be found – but there is no substitute for snuff, because, really, sneezing is a very unique phenomenon in the body.

The only other thing that can be compared and which has been compared is the sex act. Those who think in terms of physiology, they say that the sex act is just sneezing through the sex organ – and the similarity is there. It is not one hundred percent right because much more is involved in sex, greater things are involved in it. But in the beginning, just in the beginning, the similarity is there.

Something is thrown out from the nose and you feel relieved, and something is thrown out from the sex organ and you feel relieved. And both are non-voluntary. You cannot move into sex with will. If you try, you will be a failure – particularly men, because man’s sex organ has to do something. It is active. You cannot “will” its act, and if you try, then the more you try, the more it will be impossible.

It can happen, but you cannot make it happen. Because of this, in the West sex has become a problem. This half century in the West sex knowledge has developed, and everyone has become so conscious about it that the sex act is becoming more and more impossible.

If you are alert, sex will be impossible. If a man is alert while making love, the more he is alert, the more it will be difficult. He will not be able to get an erection. It cannot be willed, and if you will it you will lose it. The same method, the same technique, can be used in sex. Just in the beginning, when you feel the sensation of an erection just coming to you but it has not yet come, you just feel the vibration, become alert. The vibration will be lost, and the same energy will move into alertness.

Tantra has used this. It has tried in many ways. A beautiful naked woman will be there just as an object for meditation, and the seeker, the meditator, will sit before the nude woman meditating on her body, her form, her proportions, just waiting for the first sensation in his sex center. The moment the sensation is there, he will close his eyes. He will forget the woman. He will close his eyes, and he will become alert of the sensation. Then sex energy is being transformed into alertness.

He is allowed to meditate on the nude woman only up to the point when the sensation is felt. When he has to close his eyes and move to his own sensation and become alert there, the same as is done in sneezing. And why does this flash happen? Because mind is not there. The basic thing is that if the mind is not there and you are alert, you will have satori, you will have the first glimpse of samadhi.

Thought is the barrier. So if thought disappears in any way, the thing will happen. But thought must disappear; only then is alertness there. Thought can disappear even in sleep; thought can disappear when you go unconscious; thought can disappear when you take some drug. Thought disappears, but then there is no alertness to be aware of the phenomenon that is hidden behind thought. So I define meditation as thoughtless consciousness. You can become thoughtless and unconscious; then there is no meaning. You can be conscious with thought; you are already that.

Bring these two things together – consciousness and thoughtlessness. When they meet, meditation happens, meditation is born. And you can try with very small things because nothing is really small. Even a sneeze is a cosmic phenomenon. In existence, nothing is great and nothing is small. Even a minute atom can destroy the whole world, and even a sneeze, a very atomic phenomenon, can transform you.

So don’t see things as small or big. There is nothing small and nothing big. If you have the penetrating eye, then very small things are vital. Between atoms universes are hidden, and between the universe and an atom you cannot say which is great and which is small. Even a single atom is a universe in itself, and the greatest universe is nothing but atoms. So don’t think in terms of great and small. Just try. Don’t say, “What can happen in a sneeze? I have been sneezing the whole life, and nothing has happened.”

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #41

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Also see Follow the Sneeze IN

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)

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.

With Utmost Devotion – Osho

With utmost devotion, center on the two junctions of breath and know the knower. There is a slight difference in the techniques – slight modifications. But though the differences are slight in the techniques, for you they may be great.

A single word makes a great difference. With utmost devotion, center on the two junctions of breath. The incoming breath has one junction where it turns, the outgoing breath has another junction where it turns. With these two turnings – and we have discussed these turnings – a slight difference is made: that is, slight in the technique, but for the seeker it may be great. Only one condition is added – With utmost devotion – and the whole technique becomes different.

In the first form of it there was no question of devotion, just a scientific technique. You do it, and it works. But there are persons who cannot do such dry, scientific techniques. Those who are heart oriented, those who belong to the world of devotion, for them a slight difference has been made: With utmost devotion, center on the two junctions of breath and know the knower.

If you are not of the scientific bent, of the scientific attitude, if you are not a scientific mind, then try this: With utmost devotion – with faith, love, trust center on the two junctions of breath and know the knower. How to do this? How? You can have devotion about someone: about Krishna, about Christ you can have devotion. But how can you have devotion about yourself, about this junction of breathing? The phenomenon seems absolutely non-devotional. But that depends….

Tantra says that the body is the temple. Your body is the temple of the divine, the abode of the divine, so do not treat your body as an object. It is sacred, it is holy. And while you are taking a breath in, it is not only you who is taking the breath, it is the divine within you. You are eating, you are moving or walking… look at it in this way: it is not you, but the divine moving in you. Then the whole thing becomes absolutely devotional.

It is said about many saints that they love their bodies. They treat their bodies as if their bodies belong to their beloveds. You can treat your body in this way or you can treat it just like a mechanism – that again is an attitude. You can treat it with guilt, sin; you can treat it as something dirty; you can treat it as something miraculous, as a miracle; you can treat it as the abode of the divine. It depends on you. If you can treat your body as a temple, then this technique will be helpful – With utmost devotion…

Try it. While you are eating, try it. Do not think that you are eating. Think that it is the divine in you who is eating, and look at the change. You are eating the same thing, you are the same, but immediately everything becomes different. You are giving the food to the divine. You are taking a bath – a very ordinary, trivial thing – but change the attitude: feel that you are giving a bath to the divine in you. Then this technique will be easy: With utmost devotion, center on the two junctions of breath and know the knower.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #5

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you listen to the discourse excerpt With Utmost Devotion.

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

All 112 of Shiva’s meditation techniques (Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)

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

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

What is Tantric Sex? – Osho

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

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

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

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

So sex remains the greatest fascination and the greatest frustration.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A natural man is orgasmic in all his emotions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Osho

From This Very Body the Buddha, Discourse #8

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.

Don’t Get Stuck in the Outer – Osho

You ask: “Do I rightly understand you that even if you and your beloved can transmute your sexual energy into spirituality, that this relationship will not be satisfying either?”

Yes, it will not be satisfying either. In fact, it will create in you the greatest discontent that you have ever felt, because it will make you aware how much is possible. It will make you aware of the tremendous moment of that orgasmic unity, of that spiritual transmutation. But it will remain only momentary. With the outer, nothing can become permanent. And once the moment is gone, the higher was the peak, the lower will be the valley, and you will fall deep down in darkness. But it will make you aware of one thing, that if male and female energy can have a meeting which is non-temporal, then there will be eternal contentment.

How to manage it? Out of this question the whole science of Tantra was born. How to do it? It can be done. It cannot be done with the beloved outside — it cannot be done without the beloved outside, remember that too, because the first glimpse comes from the beloved outside. It is only a glimpse, but with it comes a new vision that, deep down inside yourself, there are both the energies present — male and female.

Man is bisexual — every man, every woman. Half of you is male and half of you is female. If you are a woman, then the female part is on top and the male part is hidden behind, and vice versa. Once you have become aware of this, then a new work starts: your inner woman and inner man can have a meeting and that meeting can remain absolute. There is no need to come back from the peak. But the first vision comes from the outer.

Hence Tantra uses the outer woman, the outer man, as part of inner work. Once you have become aware that you have a woman inside you or a man inside you, then the work takes on a totally new quality, it starts moving in a new dimension. Now the meeting has to happen inside; you have to allow your inner woman and man to meet.

In India we have had that concept for at least five thousand years. You may not have seen the statues of Shiva as Ardhanarishwar: half man, half woman. That is the picture of everybody’s being, inner being. You must have seen shivalinga: it symbolizes the male. But shivalinga is placed in the female sexual organ, it is not alone; they are together. That again represents the inner duality, the inner polarity, but the polarity can meet and merge.

With the outer, the merger will be only for the moment. Then great frustration and great misery… and the higher the moment, the deeper will be the darkness that follows it. But the meeting can happen inwardly.

First learn that the peak is possible, and then feel grateful to the woman who has given you the peak, feel grateful to the man. Tantra worships the woman as the goddess and the man as the god. Any woman who helps you to attain to this vision is a goddess, any man that helps you to attain to this vision is a god. Love becomes sacred because it gives you the first glimpses of the divine. Then the inner work starts. You have worked without, now you have to work within.

Tantra has two phases, two stages: the outer, the extrovert Tantra, and the inner, the introvert Tantra. The beginning has to be always from the without; it is because we are there, so we have to start from the place we are and then move inwards. When the inner man and woman have met and melted, and when you are no more divided inside, you have become one — integrated, crystallized, one — you have attained. This is enlightenment.

But right now everything is upside down. You have completely forgotten the inner; the outer has become your whole life. This is as if somebody is standing on his head and has forgotten completely how to stand on his feet again. Now, standing on your head your life will be really difficult. If you want to go somewhere, if you want to do something, everything will become very, very difficult, almost impossible.

And that is what is happening. People are upside down, because the without has become more important than the within. The without has become all-important, and the within is completely ignored, forgotten.

The real treasure is within. From the without, you can get only hints of the inner treasure; from the without, only arrows pointing to the innermost core of your being; from without, only milestones. But don’t cling to a milestone, and don’t think that this is the goal and you have arrived.

Remember that the ordinary man is living a very abnormal life, because his values are upside down. Money is more important than meditation, logic is more important than love, mind is more important than heart. Power over others is more important than power over one’s own being. Mundane things are more important than finding some treasures which death cannot destroy.

Larry went to an Italian restaurant, and just as the waiter was about to serve, he tripped and dumped a whole bowl of minestrone right in Larry’s lap.

Was Larry angry? Was he even slightly ruffled?

He simply looked up with great dignity and disdain and said, “Waiter, I believe there is a soup in my fly.”

Things are completely upside down. The fly is not in the soup, the soup is in the fly. And that’s why there is so much misery. Everybody seems to be simply running after shadows, knowing perfectly well that there is nothing to happen, that nothing is ever going to happen, but what else to do? Standing by the side of the road when everybody is rushing looks silly. It is better to go on rushing with the crowd.

Let this sink deep in your heart: that unless the within becomes more important than the without, you are living a very abnormal life. The normal person is one whose within is the source of everything that he is doing. The without is only a means, the within is the end.

The love affair that you have with a woman or a man is a means to the end. The end is having a love affair with your inner woman or inner man. The outer has to be used as a learning situation; it is a great opportunity.

I am not against the outer love affair, I am all for it, because without it you will never become aware of the inner. But remember don’t get stuck in the outer.

-Osho

From The Book of Wisdom, Discourse #26, Q3

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

You may also like to read a related post, Old Age is the Last Opportunity.

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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