Contemplate Something Beyond Perception – Osho

Suppose you contemplate something beyond perception, beyond grasping, beyond not being – You.

Suppose you contemplate something beyond perception – that which cannot be seen, which cannot be perceived. But can you imagine something which cannot be seen?

Imagination is always of that which can be seen. How can you imagine something, how can you suppose something, which cannot be perceived?

That which you can perceive you can imagine. You cannot even dream something which is not capable of being seen and perceived. That’s why even your dreams are shadows of reality. Even your imagination is not pure imagination, because whatsoever you can imagine you have known somehow. You can create new combinations, but all the elements of the combination are known and perceived.

You can imagine a golden mountain flying in the sky like a cloud. You have not perceived such a thing ever, but you have perceived a cloud, you have perceived a mountain, you have perceived gold. These three elements can be combined. Imagination is not original; it is always a combination of something you have perceived.

This technique says:

Suppose you contemplate something beyond perception

It is impossible, but that’s why it is worth doing, because in the very effort something will happen to you. Not that you will become capable of perceiving – if you try to perceive something which cannot be perceived, all perception will be lost. In the very effort, if you try to see something which you have never seen, all that you have ever seen will disappear.

If you persist in the effort, many images will come to you – you have to discard them, because you know that you have seen this; this can be perceived. You may not have seen it actually as it is, but even if you can imagine it, it can be perceived. Discard it. Go on discarding. This technique says to persist for that which cannot be perceived.

What will happen? If you go on discarding, it is going to be an arduous effort, because many images will bubble up. Your mind will supply many images, many dreams; many conceptions will come, many symbols. Your mind will create new combinations, but go on discarding unless something happens which cannot be perceived. What is that?

If you go on discarding, nothing will happen to you as an object; only the screen of the mind will be there with no image, with no symbol, with no dream on it, no picture on it. In that moment a metamorphosis happens. When the screen is simply there without any image, you become aware of yourself. You become aware of the perceiver. When there is nothing to be perceived, the whole attention changes. The whole consciousness reflects back. When you have nothing to see, for the first time you become aware of your own self. You start seeing yourself.

This sutra says:

Suppose you contemplate something beyond perception, beyond grasping, beyond not being – You.

Then you happen to yourself. For the first time you will become aware of the one who has been perceiving, who has been grasping, who has been knowing. But this subject is always hidden in objects. You know certain things but you never know the knower. The knower is lost in knowledge.

I see you, then I see someone else, and this procession goes on. From birth to death, I will see this and that and that, and I will go on seeing and seeing. And the seer, the one who was seeing this procession, is forgotten; it is lost in the crowd. The crowd is of objects, and the subject is lost.

This sutra says if you try to Contemplate something beyond perception, beyond grasping – which you cannot grasp by the mind – beyond not being . . . Immediately the mind will say that if there is something which cannot be seen and cannot be grasped, it is not. The mind will immediately react that if something is not seeable, not perceivable, not graspable, then it is not. The mind will say that it doesn’t exist. Don’t become a victim of the mind.

This sutra says: . . . Beyond perception, beyond grasping, beyond not being. The mind will say that this is nothing, this cannot exist, this is a not-being. The sutra says, don’t believe in it. There is something which is being beyond not-being, which exists and which cannot be perceived, and which is not graspable: that is you.

You cannot perceive yourself, or can you? Can you imagine any situation in which you can encounter yourself, in which you can know yourself? You can go on using the word “self-knowledge,” which is absolutely absurd, because you cannot know the self. The self is always the knower. It cannot be reduced to the known; it cannot be reduced to an object.

For example, if you think that you can know the self, then the self that you know will not be your self, but the one who is knowing the self will be the self. You will always remain the knower; you cannot become the known. You cannot put yourself in front of you; you will always recede back.

Whatsoever you know cannot be yourself – this means that you cannot know it. You cannot know it the way you know other things.

I cannot see myself the way I see you. Who will see? Because every relationship of knowledge, seeing, perception, means that there are at least two things: the known and the knower. Self-knowledge is not possible in this sense, because there is only one. There the knower and the known are one; the observer and the observed are one. You cannot convert yourself into an object. So the word “self-knowledge” is just wrong, but it connotes something, it says something which is true. You can know yourself in a very different sense, in an altogether different sense than from how you know other things. When there is nothing to be known, when all objects have disappeared, when all that can be perceived and grasped is no more, when you have discarded all, suddenly you become aware of yourself. And this awareness is not dual: there is no object and no subject. There is simply subjectivity.

This awareness is a different type of knowing. This awareness gives you a different dimension of existence. You are not divided in two. You are aware of yourself. You are not perceiving, you cannot grasp it, and yet it is existential – the most existential.

Try to think in this way. We have energy: that energy goes on moving to objects. Energy cannot be static. Remember it as one of the ultimate laws: energy cannot be static, it is dynamic. It cannot be otherwise. Dynamism is its very nature – energy moves. When I see you, my energy moves towards you. When I perceive you, a circle is made. My energy moves to you, then it comes back to me – a circle is made.

If my energy moves to you and doesn’t come back, I will not know you. A circle is needed: the energy must go and then come back to me. With its coming back it brings you to me. I know you.

Knowledge means that energy has made a circle. It has moved from the subject to the object, and then it has moved again and come back to the original source. If I go on living in this way – making circles with others – I will never know myself, because my energy is filled with energies of others. It brings those images; it delivers those images to me. This is how you gather knowledge.

This technique says to allow the object to disappear from there. Allow your energy to move in a vacuum, in emptiness. It goes from you, but there is no object to be grasped by it, no object to be perceived by it. It moves and comes back to you through emptiness; there is no object. It brings no knowledge to you. It comes vacant, empty, pure. It brings nothing. It brings only itself. It comes virgin – nothing has entered into it; it remains pure.

This is the whole process of meditation. You are sitting silently; your energy is moving. There is no object with which it can be contaminated, with which it can become entangled, with which it can become impressed, with which it can become one. Then you bring it back to yourself. There is no object, no thought, no image. Energy moves, the movement is pure, and then it comes back to you – virgin. As it left you it comes; it carries nothing. An empty vehicle, it comes to you, it hits you. There is no knowledge carried by it; it is coming only by itself. In that penetration of pure energy, you become aware of yourself.

If your energy is bringing something else, then you will become aware of that something. You look at a flower. The energy is bringing the flower to you – the image of the flower, the smell of the flower, the color of the flower. The energy is bringing the flower to you. It is introducing you to the flower. Then you become acquainted with the flower. The energy is covered by the flower. You never become acquainted with the energy, the pure energy which is you. You are moving to the other and coming back to the source.

If there is nothing to impress it, if it comes unconditioned, if it comes as it had gone, if it brings itself, nothing else, you become aware of yourself. This is a pure circle of energy – energy moving not to something else, but within you, creating a circle within you. Then there is no one else, only you moving within yourself. This movement becomes self-knowledge, self-illumination.

Basically, all meditation techniques, all of them, are different variations of this.

Suppose you contemplate something beyond perception, beyond grasping, beyond not being – You.

If this can happen, then for the first time you will become aware of yourself, of your being, of your existence – the subjectivity.

Knowledge is of two kinds: knowledge of objects and knowledge of the subjectivity. Knowledge of the known, the knowable, and knowledge of the knower. And a man can know millions and millions of things, he can become acquainted with the whole world, but if he is not aware of the knower, he is ignorant. He may be knowledgeable, but he is not wise. He may have collected much information, much knowledge, but the basic thing which makes one a knower is lacking – he is not aware of himself.

In the Upanishads there is a story. Svetaketu, a young boy, came back from his master to his home. He had passed all his examinations, and he had passed well. All that the master could give him, he had collected. He had become very egoistic.

When he reached his father’s house, the first thing the father asked Svetaketu was this: “You seem to be too filled with knowledge, and your knowledge is making you very egoistic – the way you walk, the way you have entered the house. I have only one question to ask you. Have you known that who knows all? Have you known that by knowing which everything is known? Have you known yourself?”

Svetaketu said, “But there was no course for it in the school, and the master never discussed it. I have known everything that can be known. You ask me anything and I will answer you. But what type of question are you raising? It was never discussed.”

The father said, “Then you go back, and unless you know that by knowing which everything is known, and without knowing which nothing is known, don’t come back. First know yourself.”

Svetaketu went back. He asked the master, “My father says I cannot be allowed to go back home, I cannot be welcomed there, because he says that in our family, we have been Brahmins not only by birth. We have been knowers, knowers of Brahma, Brahmins, not only by birth but by real authentic knowledge. So he said, ‘Unless you become a real Brahmin, not by birth, but by knowing the Brahma, by knowing the ultimate, don’t enter the house. You are not worthy of us.’ So now teach me that.”

The teacher said, “All that can be taught I have taught you. And that is something which cannot be taught. So you do one thing: you simply be available for it. It cannot be directly taught. You simply be receptive; some day it will happen. You take all the cows of the ashram . . .” The ashram had many cows; they say four hundred. “You take all the cows to the forest. Remain with the cows: stop thinking, stop verbalizing, just become a cow. Remain with the cows, love them, and be silent as cows are silent. When the cows become one thousand, come back.”

So Svetaketu went with four hundred cows to the forest. There was no use in thinking, there was no one to talk to. By and by his mind became just like a cow. He sat silently under the trees, and for many years he had to wait, because only when the cows became one thousand could he come back. By and by language disappeared from his mind. By and by society disappeared from his mind. By and by he became not a human being at all. His eyes became just like cows.

And the story is very beautiful. The story says he forgot how to count – because if language disappears and verbalizations disappears . . . He forgot how to count, he forgot when he had to return. The story is beautiful. The cows said, “Svetaketu, now we are one thousand. Now let us go back to the master’s house. He must be waiting.”

Svetaketu came back, and the master said to the other disciples, “Count the cows.”

The cows were counted and the disciples said, “Yes, there are one thousand cows.”

And the master is reported to have said, “Not one thousand, one thousand and one – that’s Svetaketu.”

He was standing amidst the cows, silent, just being there, with no thought, with no mind. Just like a cow – pure, simple, innocent. And the master said, “You need not enter. Now go back to your father’s house. You have known; it has happened to you. Why have you come again to me? It has happened to you.”

It happens: when there is no object in the mind to know, the knower happens to you. When the mind is not filled by thoughts, when there is not a single ripple, when there is not a single wave, you are there alone. There is nothing other than you. Obviously, you become aware of your self; for the first time you become filled by yourself. A self-illumination happens.

This sutra is one of the foundational ones. Try it. It is arduous, because the habit of thinking, the habit of clinging to objects, to that which can be perceived and that which can be grasped, is so deep-rooted, so ingrained, that it will take time and a very persistent effort not to be involved in objects, not to be involved in thoughts, but to just become a witness and discard them and say, “No, not this, not this.”

The whole technique of the Upanishads is condensed in two words: NETI, NETI – not this, not this.

Whatsoever comes to the mind, say, “Not this.” Go on saying and discarding and throwing all the furniture out. The room has to be empty, totally empty. When emptiness is there, then that happens.

If something else is there you go on being impressed by it, and you cannot know yourself. Your innocence is lost in objects. A thought-ridden mind is moving outwards. You cannot be related to yourself.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #59

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Contemplate Something Beyond Perception.

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.

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Conscious Doing – Osho

As I look in your eyes I never see you there – as if you are absent. You exist absently, and this is the core of all suffering. You can be alive without being at all present, and if you are not present your existence will become a boredom. And this is what has happened. So when I look in your eyes I don’t find you there. You have yet to come, you have yet to be. The situation is there, and the possibility is there – you can be there any moment – but yet you are not.

To become aware of this absence is to begin the journey towards meditation, towards transcendent.

If you are aware that somehow you are missing… you exist but you don’t know why, you don’t know how, you don’t know even who exists within you. This unawareness creates all suffering, because, unknowingly, whatsoever you do will bring suffering. It is not what you do that is basic; it is whether you do it with your presence or with your absence that is significant.

Whatsoever you do, if you can do it with your total presence, your life will become ecstatic; it will be bliss. If you do something without your presence there, absently, your life will be a suffering – bound to be. Hell means your absence.

So there are two types of seekers: one type of seeker is always in search of what to do. That seeker is on a wrong path, because the question is not of doing at all. The question is of being – what to be, how to be. So never think in terms of action and doing, because whatsoever you do, if you are absent it will be meaningless.

Whether you move in the world or you live in a monastery; whether you function in the crowd or you move to an isolated spot in the Himalayas will make no difference. You will be absent here and you will be absent there, and whatsoever you do – in the crowd or in the isolation – will bring suffering.

If you are not there, then whatsoever you do is wrong.

The second type, and the right type of seeker, is not in search of what to do, he is in search of how to be. The first thing is how to be.

One man came to Gautam Buddha. He was filled with much compassion, with much sympathy, and he asked Gautam Buddha, ‘What can I do to help the world?’

Buddha is reported to have laughed and said to the man, ‘You cannot do anything because you are not. How can you do anything when you are not? So don’t think of the world. Don’t think of how to serve the world, how to help others.’ Buddha said, ‘First be – and if you are, then whatsoever you do becomes a service, it becomes a prayer, it becomes compassion. Your presence is the turning point. Your being is the revolution.’

So these are the two paths: the path of action and the path of meditation. They are diametrically opposite. The path of action is basically concerned with you as a doer. It will try to change your actions; it will try to change your character, your morals, your relationships, but never you. The path of meditation is diametrically opposite. It is not concerned with your actions; it is directly and immediately concerned with you. What you do is irrelevant. What you are is relevant. And that is basic and primary, because all action springs from you.

Remember, your actions can be changed and modified, can even be replaced by diametrically opposite actions, but they are not going to change you. Any outward change will not bring the inner revolution, because the outward is superficial and the innermost core remains untouched; by what you do it remains untouched. But the vice versa brings the revolution: if the innermost core is different, the surface automatically changes. So think a basic question; only then can we enter these techniques of meditation.

Don’t be concerned with what you are doing. That may be a trick, that maya be a device to escape from the real problem. For example, you are violent. You can make every effort to be non-violent, thinking that by being non-violent you will become religious; by becoming non-violent you will come closer to the divine. You are cruel, and you may make every effort to be compassionate.

You can do it, and nothing will change and you will remain the same. Your cruelty will become a part of your compassion – and that is more dangerous. Your violence will become a part of your non-violence – that is more subtle. You will be violently non-violent. Your non-violence will have all the madness of violence, and through your compassion you will be cruel.

You can even kill through your compassion; people have killed. There are so many religious wars – they are fought in the mood of compassion. You can kill very compassionately, very non-violently; lovingly you can kill and murder, because you are killing for the sake of the person you are killing. You are killing him for himself, for his own sake, to help him.

You can change your actions, and this effort to change the actions may be just a device to escape the basic change. The basic change is this – first you must be. You must become more alert, more conscious of your being; only then a presence comes to you.

You never feel yourself, and even sometimes when you feel, you feel through others – through excitement, through stimulation, through reaction. Someone else is needed, and via someone else you can feel yourself. This is absurd. Alone, without excitement, with no one there to become a mirror, you fall in sleep, you get bored. You never feel yourself. There is no presence. You live absently.

This absent existence is the non-religious mind. To become filled with your own presence, with the light of your own being, is to become religious. So remember this as a basic point: that my concern is not with your actions. What you do is irrelevant. What you are – absent, present, aware, unaware – that’s my concern. And these techniques we will enter are techniques to make you more present, to bring you here and now.

Either someone else is needed for you to feel yourself, or the past is needed – through the past, through past memories, you can feel your identity. Or the future is needed – you can project in your dreams. You can project your ideals, future lives, moksha. Either you need past memories to feel that you are, or you need a future projection, or someone else, but you alone are never enough. This is the disease, and unless you alone become enough, nothing will be enough for you. And once you alone have become enough unto yourself, you have become victorious, the struggle is over. Now there will be no suffering any more. A point of no return has come.

Beyond this point there is beatitude, eternal bliss. Before this point you are bound to suffer, but the whole suffering, strangely, is your own doing. It is a miracle that you create your own suffering. No one else is creating it. If someone else is creating it then it is difficult to go beyond it. If the world is creating it then what can you do? But because you can do, it means no one else is creating your suffering – it is your own nightmare. And these are the basic elements of it.

The first thing: you go on thinking that you are, you believe that you are. This is simply a belief. You have never encountered yourself, you have never come face to face with yourself; you have never met yourself, there has been no meeting. You simply believe that you are. Throw this belief totally.

Know well that you are yet to be, that you are not, because with this false belief you will never be able to transform. On this false belief your whole life will become false.

Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, ‘Don’t ask me what to do. You cannot do anything, because to do something first you will be needed. And you are not there, so who will do it? You can think about doing, but you cannot do anything.’

These techniques are to help you, to bring you back; to help you to create a situation in which you can meet yourself. Much will have to be destroyed – all that is wrong, all that is false. Before the real arises the false will have to leave; it must cease. And these are the false notions – that you are.

These are the false notions – that you are a soul, atma, you are Brahma. Not that you are not, but these notions are false.

Gurdjieff had to insist that there is no soul in you. Against all the traditions he insisted, ‘Man has no soul. Soul is simply a possibility – it can be, it may not be. It has to be achieved. You are simply a seed.’

And this emphasis is good. The possibility is there, the potentiality is there, but it is not yet actual.

And we go on reading the Gita and the Upanishads and the Bible, and we go on feeling that we are the soul – the seed thinking that it is the tree. The tree is hidden there, but it is yet to be uncovered.

And it is good to remember that you may remain a seed, and you may die a seed – because the tree cannot come, the tree cannot sprout by itself. You have to do something consciously about it, because only through consciousness it grows.

There are two types of growth. One is unconscious, natural growth: if the situation is there, the thing will grow. But the soul, the atma, the innermost being, the divine within you, is a different type of growth altogether. It is only through consciousness that it grows. It is not natural, it is supernatural.

Left to nature itself it will not grow; just left to evolution it will never evolve. You have to do something consciously; you have to make a conscious effort about it, because only through consciousness it grows. Once the consciousness is focused there, the growth happens. These techniques are to make you more conscious.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #49

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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

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

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Wherever Your Attention Alights – Osho

Wherever your attention alights,
At this very point, Experience.

In this technique, firstly you have to develop attention. You have to develop a sort of attentive attitude, only then will this technique become possible, so then wherever your attention alights you can experience—you can experience yourself. Just by looking at a flower you can experience yourself. Then looking at a flower is not looking at the flower only, but at the looker also—but only if you know the secret of attention.

You also look at a flower, and you may think you are looking at the flower, but you have started thinking about the flower, and the flower is missed. You are no more there, you have gone somewhere else, you have moved away. By attention is meant that when you are looking at a flower, you are looking at a flower and not doing anything else—as if the mind has stopped, as if now there is no thinking and only a simple experience of the flower [is] there . . . Attention means a silent alertness with no thoughts interfering. Develop it.

You can develop it only by doing it; there is no other way. Do it more and you will develop it. Doing anything, being anywhere, try to develop it. You are traveling in a car, or in a train. What are you doing there? Try to develop attention; don’t waste time. For half an hour you will be in a train: develop attention. Just be there. Don’t think. Look at someone, look at the train or look outside, but be the look, don’t think anything. Stop thinking. Be there and look. Your look will become direct, penetrating, and from everywhere your look will be reflected back and you will become aware of the looker.

You are not aware of yourself because there is a wall. When you look at a flower, first, your thoughts change your look; they give their own color. Then that look goes to the flower. It comes back, but then again your thoughts give it a different color. And when it comes back it never finds you there. You have moved somewhere else, you are not there. Every look comes back; everything is reflected, responsed, but you are not there to receive it. So be there to receive it. The whole day you can try it on many things, and by and by you will develop attentiveness.

With that attentiveness do this:

Wherever your attention alights,
At this very point, Experience.

Then look anywhere, but simply look. The attention has alighted—and you will experience yourself. But the first requirement is to have the capacity to be attentive. And you can practice it. There is no need for it to take some extra time. Whatsoever you are doing—eating, taking a bath, standing under a shower—just be attentive. But what is the problem? The problem is that we do everything with the mind, and we are planning continuously for the future. You may be travelling in a train, but your mind may be arranging other journeys, programming, planning. Stop this. One Zen monk, Bokuju, has said, “This is the only meditation I know. While I eat, I eat. While I walk, I walk. And while I feel sleepy, I sleep. Whatsoever happens, happens. I never interfere.” That’s all there is – don’t interfere. And whatsoever happens, allow it to happen; you be simply there. That will give you attentiveness. And when you have attention, this technique is just in your hand . . .

Wherever your attention alights,
At this very point, Experience.

Just remember yourself. There is a deep reason because of which this technique can be helpful. You can throw a ball and hit the wall—the ball will come back. When you look at a flower or at a face, a certain energy is being thrown—your look is energy. And you are not aware that when you look, you are investing some energy, you are throwing some energy. A certain quantity of your energy, of your life energy, is being thrown. That’s why you feel exhausted after looking in the street the whole day: people passing, advertisements, the crowd, the shops. Looking at everything, you feel exhausted and then you want to close your eyes to relax. What has happened? Why are you feeling so exhausted? You have been throwing energy.

Buddha and Mahavir both insisted that their monks should not look too much; they must concentrate on the ground. Buddha says that you can only look up to four feet ahead. Don’t look anywhere. Just look on the path where you are moving. To look four feet ahead is enough, because when you have moved four feet, again you will be looking four feet ahead. Don’t look more than that, because you are not to waste energy unnecessarily. When you look, you are throwing a certain amount of energy. Wait, be silent, allow that energy to come back. And you will be surprised. If you can allow the energy to come back, you will never feel exhausted. Do it. Tomorrow morning, try it. Be silent, look at a thing. Be silent, don’t think about it, and wait patiently for a single moment—the energy will come back; in fact, you may be revitalized.

People continuously ask me . . . I go on reading continuously so they ask me, “Why are your eyes still okay? You should have needed specs long ago.” You can read, but if you are reading silently with no thought, the energy comes back. It is never wasted. You never feel tired. My whole life I have been reading twelve hours a day, sometimes even eighteen hours a day, but I have never felt any tiredness. In my eyes I have never felt anything, never any tiredness. Without thought the energy comes back; there is no barrier. And if you are there you reabsorb it, and this reabsorption is rejuvenating. Rather than your eyes being tired they feel more relaxed, more vital, filled with more energy.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #51

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Wherever Your Attention Alights.

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.

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Follow the Sneeze IN – Osho

These techniques help you to move to the center without any accidents, without any danger. But remember, you cannot practice them. When I say you cannot practice them, what do I mean? In a way you can practice them: suddenly you can stop. But the stopping must be sudden; you must not be prepared for it. You should not think about it and plan it and say that “At twelve o’clock I will stop.” Let the unknown happen to you when you are unprepared. Move in the unknown, the uncharted, without any knowledge. This is one technique: Just as you have the impulse to do something, stop. This is one dimension.

For example, you have the impulse to sneeze. You are feeling that the impulse is coming, you are feeling the sneeze coming. Now a moment comes when you cannot do anything – it will happen. But in the very beginning of the feeling, when you feel the sensation of a sneeze coming to you, the moment you become aware, stop! What can you do? Can you stop the sneeze? If you try to stop the sneeze, the sneeze will come sooner, because stopping will make your mind more conscious about it and you will feel the sensation more. You will become more sensitive, your total attention will be there, and that attention will help the sneeze to come out sooner. It will become unbearable.

You cannot stop the sneeze directly, but you can stop yourself.

What can you do? You feel the sensation that the sneeze is coming: stop! Do not try to stop the sneeze, just you yourself stop. Do not do anything. Remain completely unmoving, with not even your breath going in or coming out. For a moment, stop, and you will feel that the impulse has gone back, that it has dropped. And in this dropping of the impulse a subtle energy is released which is used in going toward the center, because in a sneeze you are throwing some energy out – in any impulse.

‘Impulse’ means you are burdened with some energy which you cannot use and cannot absorb. It wants to move out, it wants to be thrown out; you want a relief. That is why after you sneeze you will feel good, a subtle well-being. Nothing has happened, you have simply released some energy which was superfluous, a burden. Now it is no more there; you are relieved of it. Then you feel a subtle relaxation inside.

That is why physiologists, Pavlov, B. F. Skinner and others, say sex is also like sneezing. They say physiologically there is no difference, sex is just like sneezing. You are overburdened with energy; you want to throw it out. Once it is thrown out your mechanism relaxes, you become unburdened.

Then you feel good. That good feeling is just a release, according to physiologists, and as far as physiology goes they are right. Whenever you have some impulse, Just as you have the impulse to do something, stop! Not only with a physiological impulse, any impulse can be used. For example, you were going to drink a glass of water. You have touched the water, the glass – suddenly stop. Let the hand be there, let the desire to drink, the thirst be there inside, but you stop completely. The glass is outside, the thirst is inside; the hand is on the glass, the eyes are on the glass – stop suddenly. No breathing, no movement, as if you have become dead. The very impulse, the thirst, will release energy, and that energy is used for going to the center. You will be thrown to the center. Why? Because any impulse is a movement outward. Remember, ‘impulse’ means energy moving outward.

Remember another thing: energy is always in movement – either going out or coming in. Energy can never be static. These are the laws. If you understand the laws, then the mechanism of the technique will be easy. Energy is always in movement. Either it is moving out or moving in; energy can never be static. If it is static it is not energy, and there is nothing which is not energy, so everything is moving somewhere.

When an impulse, any impulse, comes to you, it means energy is moving out. That is why your hand goes to the glass – you have moved out. A desire has come to do something. All activities are movements toward that which is without from that which is within – movements from within to without.

When you stop suddenly, the energy cannot be static in you. You have become static, but the energy cannot be static in you, and the mechanism through which it was moving out is not dead, it has stopped. So what can the energy do? The energy cannot do anything other than move inward. Energy cannot be static. It was going out. You have stopped, the mechanism has stopped, but the mechanism which can lead it toward the center is there. This energy will move inward. […]

-Osho

Osho discusses this technique in even more detail in At the Start of Sneezing be Uninterruptedly Aware, The Book of Secrets, Discourse #41.

Excerpt from The Book of Secrets, Discourse #17

Here you can find all of Shiva’s 112 Meditation Techniques.

I have been telling you that even if you feel a sneeze coming, do not sneeze, do not cough. But if you feel an irritation in the throat, what will you do? If you try to prevent it, it will become more penetrating. If you try to block it, it will become more forcible because this is a sort of suppression. Then you will have to cough. If you feel a sneeze coming, what will you do? If you hold it, it will become more forcible, it will come out with a greater force.

But there is a way: if you feel that your throat is irritated and you want to cough, relax the throat. Do not prevent it. Simply relax the throat; be indifferent to the irritation. Relax the throat. Do not make it tense because tension will create more irritation. Relax the throat and be indifferent; feel as if you are not concerned. Within seconds the irritation will go. If you feel that a sneeze is coming, just be indifferent to it; do not do anything about it. Relax the part where you feel that the sneeze is hitting, and be indifferent.

In that indifference, out of one hundred times, ninety-nine times the sneeze will disappear. Out of a hundred times, there is only one possibility that the sneeze will come – but that too will not disturb you because you are so indifferent that even if it happens you will feel that it is happening to someone else. You will be so unconcerned that even if it comes it makes no difference. You will remain unperturbed within.

And I am not saying to you not to sneeze because others will be disturbed – no! And I am not saying not to cough because others will be disturbed. That is not the point. You will become disturbed. You will lose the whole point of the effort; the whole endeavor will be lost. […]

-Osho

Excerpt from The Supreme Doctrine, Discourse #9

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.

Be Aware You Are – Osho

“Oh lotus-eyed one, sweet of touch, when singing, seeing, tasting, be aware you are and discover the ever-living.”

We are living, but we are not aware that we are or that we are living. There is no self-remembering. You are eating or you are taking a bath or you are taking a walk: you are not aware that you are while walking. Everything is, only you are not. The trees, the houses, the traffic, everything is. You are aware of everything around you, but you are not aware of your own being – that you are. You may be aware of the whole world, but if you are not aware of yourself that awareness is false. Why? Because your mind can reflect everything, but your mind cannot reflect you. If you are aware of yourself, then you have transcended the mind.

Your self-remembering cannot be reflected in your mind because you are behind the mind. It can reflect only things which are in front of it. You can just see others, but you cannot see yourself. Your eyes can see everyone, but your eyes cannot see themselves. If you want to see yourself, you will need a mirror. Only in the mirror can you see yourself, but then you will have to stand in front of the mirror. If your mind is a mirror, it can reflect the whole world. It cannot reflect you because you cannot stand before it. You are always behind, hidden behind the mirror.

This technique says while doing anything – singing, seeing, tasting – be aware that you are and discover the ever-living, and discover within yourself the current, the energy, the life, the ever-living. But we are not aware of ourselves.

Gurdjieff used self-remembering as a basic technique in the West. The self-remembering is derived from this sutra. The whole Gurdjieffian system is based on this one sutra. Remember yourself, whatsoever you are doing. It is very difficult. It looks very easy, but you will go on forgetting. Even for three or four seconds you cannot remember yourself. You will have a feeling that you are remembering, and suddenly you will have moved to some other thought. Even with this thought that “Okay, I am remembering myself,” you will have missed, because this thought is not self-remembering. In self-remembering there will be no thought; you will be completely empty. And self-remembering is not a mental process. It is not that you say, “Yes, I am.” Saying “Yes, I am,” you have missed. This is a mind thing; this is a mental process: “I am.”

Feel “I am,” not the words “I am.” Don’t verbalize, just feel that you are. Don’t think, feel! Try it. It is difficult, but if you go on insisting, it happens. While walking, remember you are, and have the feeling of your being, not of any thought, not of any idea. Just feel. I touch your hand, or I put my hand on your head: don’t verbalize. Just feel the touch, and in that feeling feel not only the touch, but feel also the touched one. Then your consciousness becomes double-arrowed.

You are walking under trees: the trees are there, the breeze is there, the sun is rising. This is the world all around you; you are aware of it. Stand for a moment and suddenly remember that you are, but don’t verbalize. Just feel that you are. This nonverbal feeling, even if for only a single moment, will give you a glimpse – a glimpse which no LSD can give you, a glimpse which is of the real. For a single moment you are thrown back to the center of your being. You are behind the mirror; you have transcended the world of reflections; you are existential. And you can do it at any time. It doesn’t need any special place or any special time. And you cannot say, “I have no time.” When eating you can do it, when taking a bath you can do it, when moving or sitting you can do it – anytime. No matter what you are doing, you can suddenly remember yourself, and then try to continue that glimpse of your being.

It will be difficult. One moment you will feel it is there, the next moment you will have moved away. Some thought will have entered, some reflection will have come to you, and you will have become involved in the reflection. But don’t be sad and don’t be disappointed. This is so because for lives together we have been concerned with the reflections. This has become a robot-like mechanism. Instantly, automatically, we are thrown to the reflection. But if even for a single moment you have the glimpse, it is enough for the beginning. And why is it enough? Because you will never get two moments together. Only one moment is with you always. And if you can have the glimpse for a single moment, you can remain in it. Only effort is needed – a continuous effort is needed.

A single moment is given to you. You cannot have two moments together, so don’t worry about two moments. You will always get only one moment. And if you can be aware in one moment, you can be aware for your whole life. Now only effort is needed, and this can be done the whole day. Whenever you remember, remember yourself.

“Oh lotus-eyed one, sweet of touch, when singing, seeing, tasting, be aware you are and discover the ever-living.”

When the sutra says, “Be aware you are,” what will you do? Will you remember that “My name is Ram” or “Jesus” or something else? Will you remember that you belong to such and such a family, to such and such a religion and tradition? To such and such a country and caste and creed? Will you remember that you are a communist or a Hindu or a Christian? What will you remember?

The sutra says be aware you are; it simply says, “You are.” No name is needed, no country is needed. Let there be simple existence: you are! So don’t say to yourself who you are. Don’t answer that, “I am this and that.” Let there be simple existence, that you are.

But it becomes difficult because we never remember simple existence. We always remember something which is just a label, not existence itself. Whenever you think about yourself, you think about your name, religion, country, many things, but never the simple existence that you are.

You can practice this: relaxing in a chair or just sitting under a tree, forget everything and feel this “you-areness.” No Christian, no Hindu, no Buddhist, no Indian, no Englishman, no German – simply, you are. Have the feeling of it, and then it will be easy for you to remember what this sutra says: “Be aware you are and discover the ever-living.” And the moment you are aware that you are, you are thrown into the current of the ever-living. The false is going to die; only the real will remain.

That is why we are so much afraid of death: because the unreal is going to die. The unreal cannot be forever, and we are attached to the unreal, identified with the unreal. You as a Hindu will have to die; you as Ram or Krishna will have to die; you as a communist, as an atheist, as a theist, will have to die; you as a name and form will have to die. And if you are attached to name and form, obviously the fear of death will come to you, but the real, the existential, the basic in you, is deathless. Once the forms and names are forgotten, once you have a look within to the nameless and the formless, you have moved into the eternal.

“Be aware you are and discover the ever-living.” This technique is one of the most helpful, and it has been used for millennia by many teachers, masters. Buddha used it, Mahavira used it, Jesus used it, and in modern times Gurdjieff used it. Among all the techniques, this is one of the most potential. Try it. It will take time; months will pass.

When Ouspensky was learning with Gurdjieff, for three months he had to make much effort, arduous effort, in order to have a glimpse of what self-remembering is. So continuously, for three months, Ouspensky lived in a secluded house just doing only one thing – self-remembering. Thirty persons started that experiment, and by the end of the first week twenty-seven had escaped: only three remained. The whole day they were trying to remember – not doing anything else, just remembering that “I am.” Twenty-seven felt they were going crazy. They felt that now madness was just near, so they escaped. They never turned back; they never met Gurdjieff again.

Why? As we are, really, we are mad. Not remembering who we are, what we are, we are mad, but this madness is taken as sanity. Once you try to go back, once you try to contact the real, it will look like craziness, it will look like madness. Compared to what we are, it is just the reverse, the opposite. If you feel that this is sanity, that will look like madness.

But three persisted. One of the three was P. D. Ouspensky. For three months they persisted. Only after the first month did they start having glimpses of simply being – of “I am.” After the second month, even the “I” dropped, and they started having the glimpses of “am-ness” – of just being, not even of “I”, because “I” is also a label. The pure being is not “I” and “thou”; it just is.

And by the third month even the feeling of “am-ness” dissolved because that feeling of am-ness is still a word. Even that word dissolves. Then you are, and then you know what you are. Before that point comes you cannot ask, “Who am I?” Or you can go on asking continuously, “Who am I?” just continuously inquiring, “Who am I? Who am I?” and all the answers that will be provided by the mind will be found false, irrelevant. You go on asking, “Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?” and a point comes where you can no more ask the question. All the answers fall down, and then the question itself falls down and disappears. And when even the question, “Who am I?” disappears, you know who you are.

Gurdjieff tried from one corner: just try to remember you are. Raman Maharshi tried from another corner. He made it a meditation to ask, to inquire, “Who am I?” And don’t believe in any answers that the mind can supply. The mind will say, “What nonsense are you asking? You are this, you are that, you are a man, you are a woman, you are educated or uneducated, rich or poor.” The mind will supply answers but go on asking. Don’t accept any answer because all the answers given by the mind are false. They are from the unreal part of you. They are coming from words, they are coming from scriptures, they are coming from conditioning, they are coming from society, they are coming from others. Go on asking. Let this arrow of “Who am I?” penetrate deeper and deeper. A moment will come when no answer will come.

That is the right moment. Now you are nearing the answer. When no answer comes, you are near the answer because mind is becoming silent – or you have gone far away from the mind. When there will be no answer and a vacuum will be created all around you, your questioning will look absurd. Whom are you questioning? There is no one to answer you. Suddenly, even your questioning will stop. With the questioning, the last part of the mind has dissolved because this question was also of the mind. Those answers were of the mind and this question was also of the mind. Both have dissolved, so now you are.

Try this. There is every possibility, if you persist, that this technique can give you a glimpse of the real – and the real is ever-living.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #35

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt Be Aware You Are.

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.

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I Am Existing – Osho

I am existing. This is mine. This is this. O beloved, even in such, know illimitably.

I am existing. You never enter deeply into this feeling. I am existing. You are existing, but you never dig deep into this phenomenon. Shiva says: I am existing. This is mine. This is this.

O beloved, even in such know illimitably.

I will tell you one Zen anecdote. Three friends were walking along a road. Evening was just falling and the sun was setting when they become aware of a monk standing on a nearby hill. They started talking about the monk, wondering what he was doing there. One of them said, “He must be waiting for his friends. He must have gone for a walk from his hermitage and his friends are left behind, so he is waiting for them to come.”

The other denied that and said, “This is not right, because if a person waits for someone, sometimes he will look backwards. But he is not looking backwards at all. So my assumption is this – that he is not waiting for anyone. Rather, he must have lost his cow. Evening is coming near, and the sun is setting, and soon it will be dark, so he is looking for his cow. He is standing there on the hilltop, and looking for where the cow is in the forest.”

The third one said, “This cannot be right, because he is standing so silently, not moving at all, and it seems that he is not looking at all; his eyes are closed. He must be in prayer. He is not looking for any lost cow or waiting for some friends who have been left behind.”

They couldn’t decide. They argued and argued and then they said, “We must go to the top of the hill and ask the man himself what he is doing.”

So they reached the monk. The first one said, “Are you waiting for your friends who are left behind to come?”

The monk opened his eyes and said, “I am not waiting for anyone. And I have neither friends nor enemies to wait for.” He closed his eyes again.

The other one said, “Then I must be right. Are you looking for your cow which is lost in the forest?”

He said, “No, I am not looking for anyone – for any cow or anyone. I am not interested in anything except myself.”

So the third one said, “Then certainly, definitely, you are doing some prayer or some meditation.”

The monk opened his eyes and said, “I am not doing anything at all. I am just being here. I am just being here, not doing anything at all. I am just being here.”

This is what Buddhists say meditation is. If you do something, it is not meditation – you have moved far away. If you pray, it is not meditation – you have started chattering. If you use some word, it is not prayer, it is not meditation – the mind has entered in. That man said the right thing. He said, “I am just being here, not doing anything.”

This sutra says this: I am existing. Go deep into this feeling. Just sitting, go deep into this feeling – “I am existing, I am.” Feel it, don’t think it, because you can say it in the mind – “I am” – and it is futile. Your head is your undoing. Don’t go on repeating in the head: “I am, I am existing.” It is futile, it is useless. You miss the point.

Feel it deep down in your bones. Feel it all over your body. Feel it as a total unit, not in the head. Just feel it – “I am.” Don’t use the words ‘I am’. Because I am relating to you, I am using the words. ‘I am’. And Shiva was relating to Parvati, so he had to use the words ‘I am existing’. Don’t. Don’t go on repeating. This is not a mantra. You are not to repeat “I am existing, I am existing.” If you repeat this you will fall asleep, you will become self-hypnotized.

If you go on repeating a certain thing, you become auto-hypnotized. First you get bored, then you feel sleepy, and then your awareness is lost. You will come back from it very much refreshed, just like after a deep sleep. It is good for health, but it is not meditation. If you are suffering from insomnia you can use chanting, a mantra. It is as good as any tranquillizer, or even better. You can go on repeating a certain word: repeating constantly in a monotonous tone you will fall asleep.

Anything that creates monotony will give you deep sleep. So psychoanalysts and psychologists go on telling people who suffer from insomnia to just listen to the tick-tock of the clock. Go on listening to it and you will fall asleep, because the tick-tock becomes a lullaby.

The child in the mother’s womb sleeps continuously for nine months, and the heart of the mother goes on… tick-tock. That becomes a conditioning, a deep conditioning – the continuous repetition of the heart. That’s why whenever someone takes you near his heart, you feel good. Tick-tock – you feel sleepy, relaxed. Anything that gives monotony gives relaxation; you can fall asleep.

In a village you can sleep more deeply than in a city, because a village is monotonous. The city is not monotonous. Every moment something new is happening; the traffic noises go on changing. In a village everything is monotonous, the same. Really, in a village there is no news, nothing happens; everything moves in a circle. So villagers sleep deeply, because life around them is monotonous. In a city, sleep is difficult, because life around you is very sensational; everything changes.

You can use any mantra: Ram, Ram, aum, aum – anything. You can use Jesus Christ; you can use Ave Maria. You can use any word and monotonously chant it; it will give you deep sleep. You can even do this: Ramana Maharshi used to give the technique “Who am I?” And people started using it as mantra. They would sit with closed eyes and they would go on repeating. “Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?” It had become a mantra. That was not the purpose.

So don’t make it a mantra, and sitting, don’t say, “I am existing.” There is no need. Everyone knows, and you know already that you are existing; there is no need, it is futile. Feel it – “I am existing.” Feeling is a different thing, totally different. Thinking is a trick to escape from feeling. It is not only different, it is a deception.

What do I mean when I say to feel “I am existing”? I am sitting in this chair. If I start feeling “I am existing,” I will become aware of many things: the pressure on the chair, the touch of the velvet, the air passing through the room, the noise touching my body, the blood circulating silently, the heart, the breathing that goes on continuously, and a subtle vibrating feeling of the body. Because the body is a dynamism; it is not a static thing. You are vibrating. Continuously there is a subtle trembling and while you are alive it will continue. The trembling is there.

You will become aware of all these multidimensional things. And the more you become aware of the many things that are happening…. If right now you become aware of whatsoever is happening within you and without, this is what is meant by “I am existing.” If you become aware in this way, thinking will stop, because when you feel you are existing it is such a total phenomenon that thinking cannot continue.

In the beginning you will feel thoughts floating. By and by, the more you get rooted in existence, the more and more you settle down in the feeling of being, the thoughts will be far away, you will feel a distance – as if those thoughts are not now happening to you, but they are happening to someone else, very, very far away. There is a distance. And then, when you are really rooted, grounded in the being, mind will disappear. You will be there with not a single word, not a single mental image.

Why does this happen? – because mind is a particular activity for relating with others. If I am to relate with you I will have to use my mind, language, words. It is a social phenomenon; it is a group activity. So even if you are talking while alone, you are not alone – you are talking to someone. Even when you are alone, when you are talking you are talking to someone; you are not alone. How can you talk alone? Someone is present in the mind and you are talking to him.

I was reading the autobiography of a professor of philosophy. He relates that one day he was going to take his daughter, who was five years old, to school, and after leaving her at the school he was going to go to the university to deliver his lecture. So he was preparing his lecture on the way, and he forgot all about his daughter who was sitting just by his side in the car, and he started lecturing loudly. The girl listened for a few moments and then she asked, ‘Daddy, are you talking with me or without me?’

Even when you are talking it is never without, it is always with – with someone. He may not be present, but to you he is present; for your mind he is there. All thinking is a dialogue. Thinking as such is a dialogue, it is a social activity. That’s why if a child is brought up without any society, he will not know any language. He will not be able to verbalize. It is society which gives you language; without society there is no language. Language is a social phenomenon.

When you get grounded within yourself, there is no society, there is no one. You alone exist. Mind disappears. You are not relating to anyone, not even in imagination, so mind disappears. You are there without the mind, and this is what meditation is – being without the mind. Being perfectly alert and conscious, not unconscious, feeling existence in its totality, in its multidimensionality, but the mind has suddenly disappeared.

And with the mind many things disappear. With the mind, your name, with the mind, your form; with the mind, that you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Parsee; with the mind, that you are good or bad; with the mind, that you are a saint or a sinner; with the mind, that you are ugly or beautiful – everything disappears. All that is labelled on you suddenly is not there. You are in your pristine purity. In your total innocence you are there; in your virginity – grounded, not floating, rooted in that which is.

With the mind you can move into the past. With the mind you can move into the future. Without mind you cannot move into the past or into the future. Without mind you are here and now – just this moment is all eternity. Nothing exists except this moment. Bliss happens. You need not go in any search. Rooted in the moment, rooted in the being, you are blissful. And this bliss is not something which is happening really to you – you are it.

I am existing. Try it. And you can do it anywhere. Just riding in a bus, or travelling in a train, or just sitting, or lying down on your bed, try to feel existence as it is; don’t think about it. Suddenly you will become aware that you have not known many things which are continuously happening to you. You have not felt your body. You have your hands, but you have not ever felt it – what it says, and what it continuously goes on informing you; how it feels.

Sometimes it is heavy and sad, sometimes it is happy and light. Sometimes everything flows in it, sometimes everything is dead. Sometimes you feel it alive, dancing, sometimes as if there is no life in it – frozen, dead; hanging on you, but not alive.

When you start feeling your being, you will come to know the moods of your hands, of your eyes, of your nose, of your body. It is a big phenomenon; there are subtle nuances. The body goes on telling you and you are not there to hear it. And existence all around you goes on penetrating you in subtle ways, in many ways, in different ways, but you are not aware. You are not there to receive it, to welcome it.

When you start feeling existence, the whole world becomes alive to you in a totally new way; you have not known it. Then you pass through the same street and the street is not the same, because now you are grounded in existence. You meet the same friends but they are not the same, because you are different. You come back to your house and the wife you have lived with for years is not the same.

Now you are aware of your own being, you become aware of the other’s being. When the wife becomes angry, you can enjoy even her anger, because now you can feel what is happening. And if you can feel it, anger my not look like anger; it may become love. If you can feel it deep down, then anger shows that she still loves you. Otherwise she would not be angry; she would not bother. She still waits for you the whole day. She is angry because she loves you. She is not indifferent.

Remember, anger or hate or not the real opposites of love – indifference is the real opposite. When someone is indifferent to you, love is lost. If someone is not even ready to be angry with you, then everything is lost. But ordinarily if your wife is angry you react more violently, you become aggressive. You cannot understand the symbolic meaning of it. You are not grounded in yourself. You have not really known your own anger; that’s why you cannot understand others’ anger.

If you know your own anger, if you can feel it in its total mood, then you know others’ anger also. You are angry only when you love someone, otherwise there is no need. Through anger the wife is saying that she still loves you, she is not indifferent to you. She has been waiting, waiting, and now the whole waiting has become anger.

She may not say it directly, because the language of feeling is not direct. And that has become a big problem today – because you cannot understand the language of feeling, because you don’t know your own feelings. You are not grounded in your own being. You can understand only words, you cannot understand feelings. Feelings have their own way of expression, and they are more basic, more real.

Once you get acquainted with your own existence, you will become aware of others’ existence also. And everyone is so mysterious, and everyone is such a deep abyss to be known – an infinite possibility of being penetrated and known. And everyone is waiting that someone should penetrate, go deep, and feel his or her heart. But because you have not known your own heart, you cannot know anyone else’s. The nearest heart remains unknown, so how can you know others; hearts?

You move as a zombie, and you move in a crowd of zombies; everyone is fast asleep. You have only this much alertness: that you pass through fast-asleep people and without any accident you come to your home, that’s all. This much alertness you have got. This is the minimum which is possible to man, that’s why you are so bored, so dull. Life is just a long heaviness, and deep down everyone is waiting for death, in order to be delivered from life. Death seems to be the only hope.

Why is this happening? Life can be infinite bliss. Why is this so boring? You are not grounded in it. You are uprooted; uprooted, and living at the minimum. And life really happens when you live at the maximum.

This sutra will give you a maximum of existence. Thought can give you only a minimum; feeling can give you the maximum. Through mind there is no way to existence; through heart is the only way.

I am existing. Feel it through the heart. And feel this existence is mine. This is mine.

This is this. This is very beautiful I am existing. Feel it, be grounded in it; then know  this is mine – this existence, this overflowing being is mine.

You go on saying that this house is mine, this furniture is mine. You go on talking about your possessions, and you never know what you really possess. You possess total being. You possess the deepest possibility, the center-most core of existence in you. Shiva says: I am existing. Feel this. This is mine.

This too is not to be made a thought; remember that continuously. Feel it – this is mine, this existence – and then you will feel gratitude. How can you thank God? Your thankfulness is superficial, formal. And look what a misery… even with God we are formal. How can you be grateful? You have not known anything to be grateful for.

If you can feel yourself rooted in existence, merged in it, overflowing with it, and allow even dancing with it, then you will feel, “This is mine. This existence belongs to me. This whole mysterious universe belongs to me. This whole existence has been existing for me. It has created me. I am a flower of it.”

This consciousness that has happened to you is the greatest flower that has happened to the universe. And for millions and millions of years this earth was preparing for you to exist.

This is mine. This is this. To feel, “This is what life is, this is this – this suchness. I was unnecessarily worried. I was unnecessarily a beggar, unnecessarily thinking in terms of begging. I am the master.”

When you are rooted, you are one with the whole, and the existence exists for you. You are not a beggar; you become an emperor suddenly. This is this.

Oh beloved, even in such know illimitably.

And while feeling this, don’t create a limit to it. Feel it illimitably. Don’t create a boundary to it; there is none. It ends nowhere. The world begins nowhere; the world ends nowhere. Existence has no beginning and no end. You also don’t have any beginning; you also don’t have any end.

Beginning and end are because of the mind – mind has a beginning and mind has an end. Go backwards, travel backwards into your life: there comes a moment where everything stops – there is a beginning. You can remember back to when you were three years of age, or, at the most, two years of age – that is rare – but then memory stops. You can travel backwards to when you were two years of age. What does it mean? And you cannot remember anything previous to that, previous to that age of two years. Suddenly there is a blank, you don’t know anything.

Do you remember anything about your birth? Do you know anything about the nine months in your mother’s womb? You were, but the mind was not there. Mind started around the age of two; that’s why you can remember back to that age. Then there is no mind, memory stops. Mind has a beginning, mind has an end, but you are beginningless.

If in deep meditation, in such meditation you can come to feel existence, then there is no mind – a beginningless, endless flow of energy, of cosmic force; an infinite ocean around you, and you are just a wave in it. The wave has a beginning and an end – the ocean has none. And once you know that you are not the wave but the ocean, all misery has disappeared.

What is deep down in your misery? – deep down there is death. You are afraid of some end which is going to be there. It is absolutely certain; nothing is so certain as death – the fear, the trembling. Whatsoever you do, you are helpless. Nothing can be done – death is going to be there. And that goes on and on inside in the conscious and unconscious mind. Sometimes it erupts in the conscious – you become afraid of death. You push it down, and then it continues in the unconscious. Every moment you are afraid of death, of the end.

Mind is going to die, you are not going to die – but you don’t know yourself. You know something which is just a created thing: it has a beginning, it is going to have an end. That which begins must end. If you can find within your being something which never begins, which simply is, which cannot end, then the fear of death disappears. And when the fear of death disappears, love flows through you, not before it.

How can you love when there is going to be death? You can cling to someone, but you cannot love. You can use someone, but you cannot love. You can exploit someone, but you cannot love.

Love is not possible if fear is there. Fear is the poison. Love cannot flower with fear deep inside.

Everyone is going to die. Everyone is standing in a queue waiting for his time. How can you love? Everything seems nonsense. Love appears nonsense if death is there, because death will destroy everything. Even love is not eternal. Whatsoever you do for your beloved, for your lover, you cannot do anything because you cannot avoid death – it is just waiting behind everything.

You can forget it, you can create a facade, and you can go on believing that it is not going to be there, but your belief is just superficial – deep down you know it is going to be there. And if death is there, then life is meaningless. You can create artificial meanings, but they won’t help much. Temporarily, for some moments, they can help, and again the reality erupts and the meaning is lost. You can just deceive yourself continuously, that’s all – unless you come to know something which is beginningless and endless, which is beyond death.

Once you come to know it, then love is possible, because then there is no death. Love is possible. Buddha loves you, Jesus loves you, but that love is absolutely unknown to you. That love has come because fear has disappeared, and your love is just a mechanism to avoid fear. So whenever you love, you feel fearless. Someone gives you strength.

And this is a mutual phenomenon: you give strength to someone and someone gives strength to you. Both are weak, and both are seeking someone, and then two weak persons meet and they help each other to be strong – this is just wonderful! How does it happen? It is just a make-believe. You feel that someone is there behind you, with you, but you know no one can be with you in death. And if someone cannot be with you in death, how can he or she be with you in life? Then it is just postponing, just avoiding death. And because you are afraid, you need someone to make you fearless.

It is said, somewhere Emerson has written, that even the greatest warrior is a coward before his wife. Even a Napoleon is a coward, because the wife knows that he needs her strength, he needs her in order to be himself. He depends on her. When he comes back from the war, from the fighting, he is trembling, afraid. He rests in her, he relaxes in her. She consoles him; he becomes just like a child. Every husband is a child before the wife. And the wife? – she depends on the husband. She lives through him. She cannot live without him; he is her life.

This is a mutual deception. Both are afraid – death is there. They both try to love each other and forget death. Lovers become, or appear to be, fearless. Lovers even sometimes can face death very fearlessly, but that is just appearance.

Our love is part of fear – just to escape from it. Real love happens when there is no fear – when death has disappeared, when you know you never begin and you are never going to end. Don’t think it. You can think it, because of the fear. You can think, “Yes, I know I am not going to end, there is no death, the soul is immortal.” You can think because of fear – that will not help.

If you move deep in meditation it will happen. Fear will disappear, because you know yourself endlessly. You go on spreading endlessly – back into the past, forward into the future, and this very moment, this present moment, in the depth of it you are there. You simply are – you never begin, you are never going to end.

Feel this illimitably – infinitely.

-Osho

From The Book of Secrets, Discourse #59

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Here you can listen to the discourse excerpt I Am Existing.

Osho’s Book of Secrets Meditations

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

The Book of SecretsAn 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.

 

Shiva’s 112 Meditation Techniques

Following are the 112 meditation techniques, Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, that Shiva gave to his partner Devi (Shakti).

These techniques are the basis for Osho’s The Book of Secrets.

I have numbered them in the order that Osho gave them. The entire discourse series contains 80 discourses. The even number discourses were answers to questions. The techniques were given in odd numbered discourses after the first which was an introduction. Usually more than one technique was described in each of the discourses.

On the following list, the numbers in brackets at the end of the technique, for example (#3-1), signify the discourse number and which technique in that discourse. Some of them have links to posts of the discourses in which Osho describes the techniques.

  1. Radiant one, this experience may dawn between two breaths. After breath comes in (down) and just before turning up (out)—the beneficence. (#3-1)
  2. As breath turns down from down to up, and again as breath curves from up to down—through both these turns, realize. (#3-2)
  3. Or, whenever in-breath and out-breath fuse, at this instant touch the energy-less, energy-filled center. (#3-3)
  4. Or, when breath is all out (up) and stopped of itself, or all in (down) and stopped – in such universal pause, one’s small self vanishes. This is difficult only for the impure. (#3-4)
  5. 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. (#5-1)
  6. When in worldly activity, keep attention between two breaths, and so practicing, in a few days be born anew. (#5-2)
  7. With intangible breath in center of forehead, as this reaches heart at the moment of sleep, have direction over dreams and over death itself. (#5-3)
  8. With utmost devotion, center on the two junctions of breath and know the knower. (#5-4)
  9. Lie down as dead. Enraged in wrath, stay so. Or stare without moving an eyelash. Or suck something and become the sucking. (#5-5)
  10. While being caressed, sweet princess, enter the caress as everlasting life. (#7-1)
  11. Stop the doors of the senses when feeling the creeping of an ant. Then. (#7-2)
  12. When on a bed or a seat, let yourself become weightless, beyond mind. (#7-3)
  13. Or, imagine the five-colored circles of the peacock tail to be your five senses in illimitable space. Now let their beauty melt within. Similarly, at any point in space or on a wall—until the point dissolves. Then your wish for another comes true. (#9-1)
  14. Place your whole attention in the nerve, delicate as the lotus thread, in the center of your spinal column. In such be transformed. (#9-2)
  15. Closing the seven openings of the head with your hands, a space between your eyes becomes all-inclusive. (#11-1)
  16. Blessed one, as senses are absorbed in the heart, reach the center of the lotus. (#11-2)
  17. Unminding mind, keep in the middle—until. (#11-3)
  18. Look lovingly at some object. Do not go to another object. Here in the middle of the object—the blessing. (#13-1)
  19. Without support for feet or hands, sit only on the buttocks. Suddenly, the centering. (#13-2)
  20. In a moving vehicle, by rhythmically swaying, experience. Or in a still vehicle, by letting yourself swing in slowing invisible circles. (#13-3)
  21. Pierce some part of your nectar-filled form with a pin, and gently enter the piercing and attain to the inner purity. (#13-1)
  22. Let attention be at a place where you are seeing some past happening, and even your form, having lost its present characteristics, is transformed. (#15-1)
  23. Feel an object before you. Feel the absence of all other objects but this one. Then, leaving aside the object-feeling and the absence-feeling, realize. (#15-2)
  24. When a mood against someone or for someone arises, do not place it on the person in question, but remain centered. (#15-3)
  25. Just as you have the impulse to do something, stop. (#17-1)
  26. When some desire comes, consider it. Then suddenly, quit it. (#17-2)
  27. Roam about until exhausted and then, dropping to the ground, in this dropping be whole. (#17-3)
  28. Suppose you are gradually being deprived of strength or of knowledge. At the instant of deprivation, transcend. (#19-1)
  29. Devotion frees. (#19-2)
  30. Eyes closed, see your inner being in detail. Thus see your true nature. (#21-1)
  31. Look upon a bowl without seeing the sides or the material. In a few moments become aware. (#21-2)
  32. See as if for the first time a beauteous person or an ordinary object. (#21-3)
  33. Simply by looking into the blue sky beyond clouds, the serenity. (#23-1)
  34. Listen while the ultimate mystical teaching is imparted. Eyes still, without blinking, at once become absolutely free. (#23-2)
  35. At the edge of a deep well look steadily into its depths until – the wondrousness. (#23-3)
  36. Look upon some object, then slowly withdraw your sight from it, then slowly withdraw your thought from it. Then. (#23-4)
  37. Devi, imagine the Sanskrit letters in these honey-filled foci of awareness, first as letters, then more subtly as sounds, then as most subtle feeling. Then, leaving them aside, be free. (#25-1)
  38. Bathe in the center of sound, as in the continuous sound of a waterfall. Or by putting the fingers in the ears, hear the sound of sounds. (#25-2)
  39. Intone a sound, as a-u-m, slowly. As sound enters soundfulness, so do you. (#27-1)
  40. In the beginning and gradual refinement of the sound of any letter, awake. (#27-2)
  41. While listening to stringed instruments, hear their composite central sound; thus omnipresence. (#27-3)
  42. Intone a sound audibly, then less and less audibly as feeling deepens into this silent harmony. (#29-1)
  43. With mouth slightly open, keep mind in the middle of the tongue. Or, as breath comes silently in, feel the sound HH. (#29-2)
  44. Center on the sound a-u-m without any a or m. (#29-3)
  45. Silently intone a word ending in AH. Then in the HH, effortlessly, the spontaneity. (#31-1)
  46. Stopping ears by pressing and the rectum by contracting, enter the sound. (#31-2)
  47. Enter the sound of your name and, through this sound, all sounds. (#31-3)
  48. At the start of sexual union keep attentive on the fire in the beginning, and so continuing, avoid the embers in the end. (#33-1)
  49. When in such embrace your senses are shaken as leaves, enter this shaking. (#33-2)
  50. Even remembering union, without the embrace, transformation. (#33-3)
  51. On joyously seeing a long absent friend, permeate this joy. (#33-4)
  52. When eating or drinking, become the taste of food or drink, and be filled. (#33-5)
  53. O lotus-eyed one, sweet of touch, when singing, seeing, tasting, be aware you are and discover the ever-living. (#35-1)
  54. Wherever satisfaction is found, in whatever act, actualize this. (#35-2)
  55. At the point of sleep, when the sleep has not yet come and the external wakefulness vanishes, at this point being is revealed. (#35-3)
  56. Illusions deceive, colors circumscribe, even divisibles are indivisible. (#35-4)
  57. In moods of extreme desire, be undisturbed. (#37-1)
  58. This so-called universe appears as a juggling, a picture show. To be happy, look upon it so. (#37-2)
  59. O beloved, put attention neither on pleasure nor on pain, but between these. (#37-3)
  60. Objects and desires exist in me as in others. So accepting, let them be transformed. (#37-4)
  61. As waves come with water and flames with fire, so the universal waves with us. (#39-1)
  62. Wherever your mind is wandering, internally or externally, at this very place, this. (#39-2)
  63. When vividly aware through some particular sense, keep in the awareness. (#39-3)
  64. 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. (#41-1)
  65. The purity of other teachings is an impurity to us. In reality, know nothing as pure or impure. (#42-1)
  66. Be the unsame same to friend as to stranger, in honor and dishonor. (#43-1)
  67. Here is the sphere of change, change, change. Through change consume change. (#43-2)
  68. As a hen mothers her chicks, mother particular knowings, particular doings, in reality. (#45-1)
  69. Since, in truth, bondage and freedom are relative, these words are only for those terrified with the universe. This universe is a reflection of minds. As you see many suns in water from one sun, so see bondage and liberation. (#45-2)
  70. Consider your essence as light rays from center to center up the vertebrae, and so rises livingness in you. (#47-1)
  71. Or in the spaces between, feel this as lightning. (#47-2)
  72. Feel the cosmos as a translucent ever-living presence. (#47-3)
  73. In summer when you see the entire sky endlessly clear, enter such clarity. (#49-1)
  74. Shakti, see all space as if already absorbed in your own head in the brilliance. (#49-2)
  75. Waking, sleeping, dreaming, know you as light. (#49-3)
  76. In rain during a black night, enter that blackness as the form of forms. (#51-1)
  77. When a moonless rainy night is not present, close eyes and find blackness before you. Opening eyes see blackness. So faults disappear forever. (#51-2)
  78. Wherever your attention alights, at this very point, experience. (#51-3)
  79. Focus on fire rising through your form from the toes up until the body burns to ashes but not you. (#53-1)
  80. Meditate on the make-believe world as burning to ashes, and become being above human. (#53-2)
  81. As, subjectively, letters flow into words and words into sentences, and as, objectively, circles flow into worlds and worlds into principles, find at last these converging in our being. (#53-3)
  82. Feel: my thought, I-ness, internal organs – me. (#55-1)
  83. Before desire and before knowing, how can I say I am? Consider. Dissolve in the beauty. (#55-2)
  84. Toss attachment for body aside, realizing I am everywhere. One who is everywhere is joyous. (#57-1)
  85. Thinking no thing will limited-self unlimit. (#57-2)
  86. Suppose you contemplate something beyond perception, beyond grasping, beyond not being – you. (#59-1)
  87. I am existing. This is mine. This is this. O beloved, even in such know illimitably. (#59-2)
  88. Each thing is perceived through knowing. The self shines in space through knowing. Perceive one being as knower and known. (#61-1)
  89. Beloved, at this moment let mind, knowing, breath, form, be included. (#61-2)
  90. Touching eyeballs as a feather, lightness between them opens into heart and there permeates the cosmos. (#63-1)
  91. Kind Devi, enter etheric presence pervading far above and below your form. (#63-2)
  92. Put mindstuff in such inexpressible fineness above, below and in your heart. (#65-1)
  93. Consider any area of your present form as limitlessly spacious. (#65-2)
  94. Feel your substance, bones, flesh, blood, saturated with the cosmic essence. (#67-1)
  95. Feel the fine qualities of creativity permeating your breasts and assuming delicate configurations. (#67-2)
  96. Abide in some place endlessly spacious, clear of trees, hills, habitations. Thence comes the end of mind pressures. (#69-1)
  97. Consider the plenum to be your own body of bliss. (#69-2)
  98. In any easy position gradually pervade an area between the armpits into great peace. (#71-1)
  99. Feel yourself as pervading all directions, far, near. (#71-2)
  100. The appreciation of objects and subjects is the same for an enlightened as for an unenlightened person. The former has one greatness: he remains in the subjective mood, not lost in things. (#73-1)
  101. Believe omniscient, omnipotent, pervading. (#73-2)
  102. Imagine spirit simultaneously within and around you until the entire universe spiritualizes. (#75-1)
  103. With your entire consciousness in the very start of desire, of knowing, know. (#75-2)
  104. O Shakti, each particular perception is limited, disappearing in omnipotence. (#75-3)
  105. In truth forms are inseparate. Inseparate are omnipresent being and your own form. Realize each as made of this consciousness. (#75-4)
  106. Feel the consciousness of each person as your own consciousness. So, leaving aside concern for self, become each being. (#77-1)
  107. This consciousness exists as each being, and nothing else exists. (#77-2)
  108. This consciousness is the spirit of guidance of each one. Be this one. (#77-3)
  109. Suppose your passive form to be an empty room with walls of skin—empty. (#79-1)
  110. Gracious one, play. The universe is an empty shell wherein your mind frolics infinitely. (#79-2)
  111. Sweet hearted one, meditate on knowing and not-knowing, existing and not-existing. Then leave both aside that you may be. (#79-3)
  112. Enter space, supportless, eternal, still. (#79-4)

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Osho Tantra and the Secrets of Meditation: A Course in Witnessing is a module of 20 two-hour meditation programs based on Osho’s The Book of Secrets meditations.

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.

Tantra Failed for Two Reasons – Osho

Do you see shortcomings in the teachings of Tantra that incline you to feel tantric methods are not suitable for us?

It is not a complete system. There is a basic fallacy that human beings fall into: they find a small truth, a part of the truth, and rather than discover the whole, the remaining part they imagine to fill up the gap. Because they have part of the truth, they can argue and they can manage to make a system, but the remaining part is simply their invention.

All the systems have done that. Rather than discovering the whole truth, it is the human tendency to say, “Why bother? We have found a small piece which is enough for the showcase, which is enough to silence any enemy who raises any question” – and the remaining is just invention.

For example, tantra is right that sexual energy is the basic energy, so this energy should be transformed into higher forms. It is a truth. But what happened is that they never went very deep into meditation; meditation remained just secondary. And man’s sexuality shows itself so powerfully that in the name of tantra it became simply sexual orgy. Without meditation that was going to happen. Meditation should have been the most primary thing because that is going to transform the energy, but that became secondary.

And many people, who were sexually perverted, sexually repressed, joined the tantra school. These were the people who brought all their perversions, all their repressions. They were not interested in any transformation, they were interested only in getting rid of their repressions; their interest was basically sexual.

So although tantra has a piece of truth, it could not be used rightly. Unless that piece of truth is put in second place, and meditation moves into first place, it will always happen that in tantra, people will be doing all kinds of perversions. And with a great name, they will not feel that they are doing anything wrong; they will feel they are doing something religious, something spiritual.

Tantra failed for two reasons. One was an inner reason – that meditation was not made the central point. And second, tantra had no special methodology for the perverted and the repressed, so that first their repressions and perversions are settled and they become normal. And once they become normal, then they are introduced to meditation. Only after deep meditation should they be allowed in tantra experiments. It was a wrong arrangement, so the whole thing became, in the name of a great system, just an exploitation of sex.

That’s what many of the therapists are doing. Just the other day I saw Rajen’s advertisement for a tantra group – with an obscene picture. It will attract people because this is real pornography. Why bother to go to see just pictures printed on paper when you can see real people doing pornography? And Rajen has no understanding of meditation, has never meditated.

And these people will feel good, relieved, because the society does not allow them… In the group they will be allowed to do everything they want to do, so much repression will be thrown out, and they will feel relieved and light and they will feel thankful that they have gone through a great tantra experience. And there has been no tantra experience – it was simply a sexual orgy. And within a few days, they will again collect repressions because they cannot do it outside in the society. So they become permanent customers, chronic tantrikas.

And the so-called therapists enjoy the money that they bring. They have nothing to lose, they simply allow freedom. They start with all the great words that I have been using – “freedom,” “expression,” “no repression,” ”just be yourself, and don’t be worried what others are thinking,” “do your own thing.” And those idiots start doing their own thing!

First people should be introduced to meditation, and then they should be introduced to tantra methods. This is not tantra. Tantra methods are totally different. These people who are doing tantra, they don’t know anything about tantra.

For example, Ramakrishna meditated deeply, and whenever he felt any sexual urge disturbing his meditation he would ask his wife Sharda – who was a beautiful woman – to sit on a high stool, naked, and he would sit in front of her just looking at her, meditating on her till that sexual urge subsided. Then he would touch the feet of Sharda, his own wife, and he would thank her, saying, “You have been helping me immensely; otherwise, where would I have gone? The urge needed some expression, and just watching you was enough.”

The temple of Khajuraho has beautiful statues in all sexual postures. It was a tantra school that made the temple and those statues. And the first thing the student had to do was to meditate on each statue – and they are arranged in such a way that from one corner you go around the temple in a circle. It may take six months, but you have to watch each statue until you can see it just as a statue with no sexuality in it – and it is in a sexual posture. But just in your watching it, seeing it for months, it becomes a pure piece of art; all pornography disappears. Then you move to another. And all the perversions of human mind have been put into the statues.

And when you have circled the whole temple, only then will the master allow you inside the temple. Those six months are of immense meditation and of tremendous release, all repressions gone: you are feeling absolutely light. Then the master allows you in. And inside the temple there is no sexual statue; inside the temple there is nothing – emptiness.

Then the master teaches you how to go deeper into your meditation which has arisen in the six months, and now you can go very deep because there is no hindrance, no problem, no sexuality. And this going deep into meditation with no sexual disturbance means the sexual energy is moving with the meditation, not against it. That’s how it is transformed and takes higher forms.

All these so-called therapists know nothing about tantra; know nothing of why it failed. But they are not interested in that, they are interested in exploiting repressed people. And the repressed people are happy because after a seven or ten day tantra session, they feel relieved; they think this is some spiritual growth. But within two or three days all that spiritual growth will be gone, and they are ready for another group.

There are some people – you can call them “groupies” – that move from one group to another group to another group. Their whole life is just a movement from group to group. Just like hippies… but you can call them “groupies.”

-Osho

From The Path of the Mystic, Discourse #38

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.

From Sex to Ecstasy – Osho

Do values like love, religiousness, authenticity, happiness, change as human consciousness grows upwards?

The movement of human consciousness from darkness to light, from unconsciousness to consciousness, is the greatest revolution there is.

Everything in human life changes, even with a slight movement in consciousness. It all depends on where your consciousness is. But this is something which has never been explored. If you look into the dictionaries you will not find three meanings of love; there should be. You will not find three meanings of religiousness; there should be. You will not find three meanings of happiness either; there should be. Let us move step by step. Love, for the person who lives in the darkness of his instincts, is not even worth calling love. It is simply sex, a strategy of nature to go on reproducing itself.

You are being used as a means – that is the ugliest part of it. You are not the master of it, you are in the hands of biology. And whatever you are doing, it is not your doing either: you are forced by your instinctive nature to do it – there is no option, it is not your choice. You cannot choose – as far as instincts are concerned, their grip on you is absolute; you are simply a prisoner. But you go on befooling yourself: you think it is something that you are doing – it is something that is being done through you.

There is a story in India…. In Jagganath Puri, one of the sacred places of Hindus – jagganath means the lord of the world; the temple in Jagganath Puri is the temple of the lord of the world. Because of the temple, the city has grown around it, and because of the temple, the whole city is called Jagganath Puri.

Every year there is a great festival; millions of people gather. The statue from the temple is taken on a chariot for people to see, and it goes around those millions who have gathered. The chariot is drawn by beautiful horses, twelve, of the same color, pure white – the color of the lord of the world. The chariot is golden, of immense value.

Once it happened – this is how the story goes – that a dog started walking in front of the chariot, in front of the horses. Now, when millions of people were there, who was going to bother about a dog who is walking in front of the chariot? People were falling on the ground, prostrating, to give respect to the lord of the world. And the dog thought, “This is great! I have so many followers – I had no idea before. Such a multitude of disciples… I must be some great master.”

Obviously – the logic is simple – the disciples were there and everybody was prostrating to him. He was not aware of the lord of the world, who was behind. Even if he tried he could not see, because the statue was high in the chariot, and then there were twelve horses. It was not possible for the dog to find out to whom… and they were almost touching his feet. And when somebody is respected by millions of people in this way, the very idea of thinking that this respect is being given to somebody else who is behind is impossible – it is against the ego. And the evidence is so clear, anybody can see.

This is the situation of man as far as biology is concerned. The chariot of biology is behind you, carrying the lord of nature, and you think everything is being done by you. Just a little alertness is needed and you will be able to see that it is nothing to do with you. Nature wants to fulfill itself – you are being used as a means.

The antagonism of religion against sex is ninety-nine percent stupid, but there is one percent of truth which I cannot deny. But I have never talked about that one percent of truth to you because there is the danger that the one percent truth may deceive you and you will forget the ninety-nine percent which is untrue. So I have been hammering on the ninety-nine percent. But to make my picture complete… these are my last touches to the picture, so I cannot leave anything out.

That one percent of truth is significant; in fact because of that one percent, all religions became anti-sex. And that truth is that sex makes man a fool, gives him the idea that he is the master of it, while he is only a slave. And the slavery has to be broken – he has to be pulled out of this ditch. But if he thinks that that ditch is a palace then you cannot pull him out. You cannot even persuade him to come out of it; hence, the condemnation of sex by all the religions.

But they overdid it, and they forgot the ninety-nine percent dangers just for the one percent. It could have been done very easily without taking the risk of ninety-nine percent falsehood. But they saw the danger of man being simply a means, and that is the lowliest position possible; you are just a means, not an end. You are being used by some unknown force of which you have no idea. And you go on thinking in your mind that all these prostrating people are prostrating to you.

The man living on the instinctive level only has an hallucination of love. That hallucination is created by nature, by biology, chemistry. You have in your body drugs which are released when you are making love, and you start moving into euphoria. That is one of the reasons why people who become addicted to drugs slowly, slowly become uninterested in sex.

The hippies and yippies and all kinds of people – when they became too interested in drugs, they lost their fervor for sex completely, because now they had found a better way of getting into a euphoric state. Now sex seemed to be nothing compared to it. That can give you a clue that both are drugs.

Nature has been using that drug in a very minute quantity; there was no need for more up to now.

Perhaps nature will have to think again – find out better drugs, create better chemistry; bring its level up to date; it is lagging far behind. Man’s mind has created things like LSD; far superior; so superior that a man like Aldous Huxley thought that LSD gives you samadhi – that it is actually what Kabir and Buddha and Rumi and all the mystics of the world have been talking about. But they had bullock-cart methods to reach to this state.

Now science has given us very advanced drugs, there is no need for yoga and tantra and other things – you just take an injection. You yourself push the injection; there is no need for somebody else to do it. And for hours you are in a euphoric state which is certainly superior to what you call orgasm, because orgasm is so momentary that it only creates more desire for it; it never gives you any satisfaction.

The second symptom that it is a drug is its power of addiction: people become addicted to sex. And a very strange thing about addiction is that if you have the drug, it is nothing; if you don’t have it, you are missing. You never think what you are missing because when you have it, it is nothing. Each time you have it you feel that it is just a futile effort, nothing comes out of it. You don’t move a single inch in evolution. You just jump for a moment in the air and with a thump you fall back on the ground.

That’s why people don’t like to make love publicly, there is no other reason. The reason is nobody wants to look so foolish. Now, in California, which is the most advanced stupid place in the whole world, they have hotels for peeping Toms – you have to pay for it. Inside two fools are making love, and many around the room are sitting and looking and enjoying what the two fools are enjoying. They are enjoying how the couple is making fools of themselves. People pay for it, but those two people are not aware of it; they have also paid.

One man, the first day, was inside the room, but coming out he found many people really hilarious. He asked them, “What is the matter?”

They said, “The show was so good!”

“Which show?” He asked.

They said, “You don’t know? Come tomorrow – it is worth seeing.” The man was such an idiot, and he had been doing such idiotic things, it was worth seeing. The next day the man came with these friends. Now he was outside the wall – and then he found what the matter was: the previous day he had been inside and all these people had enjoyed him. This was tricky – now he was enjoying somebody else!

All the cultures around the world have prohibited, in some way or other, lovemaking in public places, for the simple reason that if you want to be idiotic then at least find some privacy. Don’t make yourself unnecessarily a public show free of charge. A crowd will gather and they will enjoy. Nobody can pass by that place; they will all stop there. And they know they all are doing the same kinds of things. But it is an unconscious state.

Love, at the instinctive level – which is the lowest level – is just a dream created by nature so that you can pass through this arduous job of making love. If there is no euphoria around it, you are going to refuse: “I am not going to make a fool of myself.” Nature has given you a certain allurement.

So in the unconscious state where instinct functions, love is only a name. It means nothing, it simply means foreplay… because just going to a woman and asking her, “Are you ready to come with me to bed?” looks so sudden and so inhuman that the woman, even if she wanted to come with you, is going to slap you. Instead of sleeping with you she is going to slap you then and there.

No, you have to follow a certain procedure – and that procedure you call love. It is not that you do it deliberately to cheat the woman, no: you are being cheated as much as she is being cheated by the same biological forces. The same force is making you say beautiful things to her, what you call “sweet nothings,” whispered into her ear. And the same force is managing things from the other side also, so that she believes you. Whatever you are saying – even if the woman is the ugliest that you have seen, if you say to her, “You are the most beautiful woman in the world, perhaps another Cleopatra,” she is going to believe it! And it is not that you are saying it to cheat her, to deceive her in any way; in that moment you are really true.

One of my friends, a very rich man, who presented me with almost everything…. He made it a point that nobody could present anything before him, so everything that I needed or could have needed anytime he managed to present to me – things which I never used. I asked him also “What am I going to do with this?”

He said, “That is not the point. The point is, nobody is going to present you anything before me.

Later on they can go on presenting you with things – and millions will be presenting you things out of love – but they will always be after me. Nobody else can be first.”

And I was very reluctant, because if there was something I was not going to use, if it was no use to me, he was unnecessarily wasting money. And he was so particular and such a perfectionist that only the best satisfied him. If I would not take something then he would find ways somehow to smuggle the thing into my house. Once, when I was leaving – I used to stay with him at least three days every year, that was a commitment. So three days I used to stay with him every year, and when I was leaving he said to me – which he had never said before – “Just be a little careful about your suitcase.”

I said, “I have come so many times, and so many times you have come to the train to say goodbye to me, but you have never said to me, ‘Be careful about the suitcase.’ What is the matter?”

He said, “Nothing is the matter,” and he gave me the key.

I said, “Strange – why are you keeping the key? If it had been left with you, then I would have been in trouble” – and it was a thirty-six-hour journey from his place to Jabalpur.

He said, “No, I was not going to forget it.”

As the train left, the first thing I did, I opened the suitcase: what was the matter? The suitcase was full of one-hundred rupee notes. I thought, “My God! What has he done?” And there was a slip in an envelope: “This is for a new Fiat car. Purchase it immediately. And you cannot say no to me because that will hurt me my whole life.”

I said, “This is strange.” I am continually traveling – in Jabalpur I remain only for five to seven days a month at the most, and that too, not at one stretch. But he will be certainly hurt.” And as I reached home, immediately my phone was ringing. He said, “You have to do first things first. I have already arranged it. I have contacted the Fiat Company in Jabalpur – and the car is ready there. Just take the suitcase and take delivery of the car.”

I said, “You don’t leave anything for me!” The car was already standing there ready and the man said, “We have been waiting for you.”

I said, “What to do? The train was two hours late.” And my friend must have been phoning according to the timetable. In India it is said that that’s why the timetable is published – so you can find how late the train is; otherwise how will you find out by how much the train is late? The timetable is absolutely a necessity. Only once it happened that I got into a carriage at the exact time. Traveling for thirty years continually; that was the only time the train arrived exactly on time; it was a miracle. I went to the guard and thanked him; I said, “This is a miracle.”

He said, “It is not a miracle. You don’t know – this is yesterday’s train! We are twenty-four hours late, we are not on time.”

I said to the man at the garage, “What could I do? – the train was late, so two hours….”

He said, “Your friend was very particular about everything; a radio had to be in the car.” And he had made sure of everything, insurance…. And he asked the garage owner to arrange a license for me because otherwise the car might just stay parked at my place. He gave me the first tape-recorder, the first camera – everything that he could find, he would immediately bring to me.

This man was rare in many ways. He was a miser – such a miser that beggars simply bypassed his house. If any beggar ever stood there, other beggars thought, “This seems to be a new man

– standing before Rekhchand Parekh’s house, begging!” He had never donated to any institution in his life, never given a single pai to any beggar.

His wife had taken me to introduce to her husband because she said, “He is so miserly, and he has so much money. And we have only three daughters, who are married and have rich houses, so there is no problem. And there is no son, there is nobody after us, but he goes on collecting – even I don’t know how much he has.”

They lived in a place, Chanda, in Maharashtra. She said, “He had purchased almost one-third of the houses of the city – it seems he is going to purchase the whole city. If there is any house for sale, he is not going to let anybody else purchase it. And his only joy seems to be just accumulating money. I have brought many Jaina monks – because they were Jainas, and they were Gandhians – and I have brought many great disciples of Gandhi, thinking perhaps somebody will change his mind. But he is very straight and does not give any chance for anybody to even touch him.”

So I said, “Okay, I will come. I cannot guarantee anything; I don’t know what type of man he is, but he appeals to me.”

He had come to receive me at the station. While we were going to his house – he was driving –

I told him, “One thing I should tell you is that your wife has brought me here to persuade you not to be miserly. She wants you to donate to institutions that are doing a public service, to religious institutions, to schools, to hospitals. I am not interested in all of these things; I have just come to meet you because you attracted me. You are a rare man! Never in your life have you given to a beggar, never have you donated a single pai?”

He said, “Never, because I am waiting for the man who is worth to be given everything.”

When we reached his house, his wife was surprised because never before had he taken to his sitting room any saints that she had brought. And he told the servants that I would be staying in his guest house, in his sitting room; that I would be there: “And tell my wife she need not worry about this man.” His wife was at a loss: What had happened?

A sudden synchronicity, he told me – not the word “synchronicity,” he had never heard that, but he told me, “It is strange, the moment I saw you, I felt, ‘This is the man.’” And even after we had known each other for twenty years, there was not a single question from him – no question, no doubt, no argument – whatever I was saying was truth to him.

I asked his wife only one question. After being there for the first time for three days, I asked his wife, “Is your husband interested in sex or not?”

She said, “Not at all, and it is not that he represses, he is simply finished. And you can see now that he is a strange man. He has told me, ‘If you are not finished you are free; you can have sex with whoever you want. I am finished with it.”’

The moment a man is finished with sex as an instinct that is forcing him to do something, he becomes in a certain way a master of himself and he starts having insights, visions which the unconscious, instinctive man cannot have.

Just looking at me – not a single word had been said – he said, “I have found the person.” And then whenever I needed any amount of money, for myself or somebody else, I had just to inform him, “Give this much money to this man.”

He never asked, “Who is this man and why is so much money needed for him?” He simply gave it.

His wife was simply shocked. She could not believe that this miserly man… how suddenly he had completely become just the opposite. I told her, “There is no problem. He is not miserly – it was your misunderstanding. He never wanted to give to those people who are not worthy of it. And coming from the station to the house he said to me, ‘I have found you; now all that I have belongs to you. Whatsoever you want to do with it you can do.’ He is not a miserly man, it was your misunderstanding. It is difficult to find such a man, so generous.” But from where was his generosity coming? His generosity was coming from a certain mastery over himself.

The instinctive man clings to everything: to sex, to money, to power – to everything.

I asked him, “Why do you go on purchasing all the houses?”

He said, “Some day you may like to have a commune – then from where am I going to suddenly give you a commune? By that time I will have purchased the whole city. I know that you will take a little time before you need a place – I am preparing it for you.” Now, nobody would have thought that he was purchasing houses… that even before knowing me, he was purchasing them for somebody who was going to come into his life, who one day may need this whole city.

And many times it happened… he used to come with me once in a while for a tour. Anybody would think that he was a miser because he was such a rich, super-rich man, but he would always travel third class on the passenger trains. Never express trains, mail trains, no; never first class, air-conditioned – out of the question. But whenever he would travel with me, he would say, “You can travel in the air-conditioned class; I will travel in the third class.”

Once I asked, “Why do you insist on traveling third class?”

He said, “I have my own ideas. People think I am a miser – I don’t care a bit about money. What am I going to do with the money? Soon I will die and all this money will be lying here. But to travel in the third class is an experience: the crowd, the people, the gossips, and things that go on happening in the third class of an Indian railway train….” He had traveled all over India, and he had friends at every station; he would call the coolies by their names. And he knew every place where you could get the best milk, where you could get the best tea, where you could get the best sweets.

He said, “With an express train, a mail train, this is not possible, because they stop only at a few stations and I want to stop at every station, because at every station I have friends and I have things to do. The passenger train stays longer at every station. If other trains are passing, then the passenger train will be delayed; no other train will be delayed, so you always have hours on your hands. And all these stationmasters are my friends, the guards are my friends, the drivers are my friends – because I call all of them when I know that a particular sweet is made the best at that station. So they say to me, ’Parekh, enjoy yourself! Unless you enter the train, the train will not move.’ ”

And he said, “I like to be the master rather than the servant – not that they give the whistle and you run, no.”

That was his reason: “I want to be the master. When I enter the train, then whistling and flagging and everything happens – but first they have to see that Parekh has entered.”

He was an old man – I was only thirty-five, he was fifty at that time – but he would take me out of the station, and he would say, “Come outside. The mango trees are great here.”

I would say, “The train is there – are we going to pick mangos? And then if we miss the train…. I have my appointment.”

He would say, “Don’t be worried. Until I enter the train, the train remains in the station. You can go up the tree, I am also coming; we will go up the tree and pick mangos.”

One day it happened: we were picking mangos and Parekh said to me, “Just look upwards,” and there was another man. He said, “He is the driver. He knows that I will come to pick mangos so the train has to stay. So why waste time? – Collect a few mangos, and these mangos are really sweet! In fact, the guard will be in some other tree…. It is all under my control.”

This man had no instinctive force. He was not in any way interested in any particular food; he liked all kinds of food, he liked all kinds of clothes. In fact he was so disinterested that anything would do – no special liking, disliking. But he was a man full of love.

Once in a city in Rajasthan, Biawar, he was with me, and I had a fever. The whole night he remained by my side. I told him, “Parekh, you go to sleep. Because of you I cannot go to sleep!”

He said, “That is up to you – that is your problem. I am not saying to you, ‘Don’t go to sleep’; I am trying to help you to go to sleep. As far as I am concerned I cannot sleep knowing that you have a fever. The fever may increase in the night and I may be asleep. That is not permissible.”

And actually it happened: in the night the fever increased; at two o’clock it was one hundred and five. He said, “Do you see the point? You would not have awakened me.”

I said, “That is true.”

He called the doctor and he said to me, “This is not the time for you to leave the body. If you can make some arrangement, I am willing to leave the body and you remain in the body – because you have much to do, and I have nothing to do.”

This is love of a totally different kind – a caring, a friendliness.

The instinctive love can become any moment hate. The man who was ready to die for you can kill you. The woman who was so caring towards you, so loving towards you, can poison you; literally she can poison you. Love, if it is instinctive, is not in your hands; you are just a slave.

The unconscious is very easily convertible into its opposite, and you cannot do anything about it.

But when love comes to the conscious level – that is, when it comes to the level of intellect, not instinct – then it has a different flavor. Then it has no biological purpose.

What biological purpose can music have? What biological purpose can poetry have? Or painting? Or philosophy? But Socrates is ready to die for his philosophy. There seems to be a tremendous love affair with his own system that he has created. He knows perfectly well that his death is not going to destroy his philosophy, but if he compromises just to go on living, that may destroy his whole philosophy. The very compromise – because that was one of his teachings: never compromise. Truth is truth, and untruth is untruth. And there is no possibility of compromise.

Just the other day I received a very beautiful, nice, elegant letter from a council of priests, bishops, Christian theologians. They have a certain council in America, and they have written that they have been discussing me now for almost two to three years – reading, discussing. I have become their center of discussion. They have invited me to come, and they will take every care; they want to exchange thoughts with me. That’s where the trouble is.

The whole letter is beautiful. And in this too – they have not consciously written anything rude – they are unconscious people. An exchange of thoughts is not something bad, but they don’t know that you cannot exchange thoughts with me; I don’t deal in that business. If you know, then I will not bother. If you don’t know, then how is the exchange going to be? What are you going to give me in exchange? Either you know or you don’t know; there is no third position. You cannot say, “A little bit I know,” because truth cannot be divided into fragments.

You cannot know truth a little bit; either you know it, the whole of it, or you don’t know it, the whole of it. So what exchange?

Now, I may look rude to them. I am not ready for any exchange because as far as I am concerned I don’t need anybody’s ideas. It was so difficult to get rid of them, now again to exchange…. It took me twenty-one years to get rid of other people’s ideas. I am not interested. Even if God invites me for an exchange of ideas – nothing doing! You can have your ideas, and I don’t have any ideas to give you.

I can share myself, but it is not going to be an intellectual discussion. It is going to be an intelligence communion; but for that, that council cannot be ready. They have already decided what is right, who is the messiah. They have already decided that God exists. Now what remains to be exchanged?

You have your whole theology already decided, by others, not by you. You have borrowed it and now you are feeling in confusion because of my ideas. If my ideas are so confusing, that is proof enough that you don’t know what truth is; otherwise, what is the point of discussing for three years? Who am I? – I have not been discussing those fellows, not even for three days, what to say about three years. And they must have written great theological books….

There is no possibility of exchange; but at the instinctive level, everything is an exchange. You give something, you take something – and there is every effort to take more than you give. That’s the whole difficulty of all the couples around the world. The wife goes on saying, “I love you, but you don’t love me.” The husband says, “How to prove it? I love you.” But nobody can convince the other.

It is not a question of convincing. But why does the question arise that “You love me less,” or “I love you more”? At the instinctive level, love is a quantity. You can measure it – how many kilos you give and how many kilos you get in return, in exchange. And you can see who is a loser. It is a business deal. And people are continually quarreling, and trying to manage to snatch as much from the other as possible.

But when love moves to the conscious level, when it has no biological slavery, when it is free of biology… that does not mean that you cannot make love to someone. You can make love to someone, but now it will have a totally different quality. It will not be in any way a bondage, an enforcement by nature. It will be out of your freedom; you can share.

The right word to use will be… it will be just playfulness. Yes, you can play with somebody’s body. You like the body, you enjoy the body, you enjoy the warmth of the body; you enjoy the contours of the body. You can be playful, there is no business deal.

In fact that is why – along with many other reasons, this is also one of the reasons – I am in favor of birth control methods, while all the religions are against it. You will be surprised to know what is going on in the minds of the popes, shankaracharyas, imams, rabbis. You may not have thought of it in that way, perhaps they are not even aware themselves, but I want it to be clear to you and to them. This is the fact that is going on in religious people’s minds: If birth control methods become more prevalent, then sex will be a playfulness. Then you cannot call it sin.

There is nothing involved, no sin at all. Two persons enjoying each other’s warmth – there is no problem in it. They cannot condemn sex, they cannot condemn you, that you are in bondage, a slave. They cannot say to you, “You are only a means in the hands of biology,” because birth control methods make you capable, even if you are not conscious, they make you capable of turning sex into playfulness; and that is the danger. Their whole theology will collapse because no religious scripture had the idea that there were going to be birth control methods.

They were happy with the slavery of sex because then they could condemn it and you could not argue – it is so clear that it is a slavery, and nobody wants to be a slave: So repress it, get out of it. But the dilemma is that the more you repress it, the more you try to get out of it, the more you are caught in it. Only by playfulness is there a possibility one day, suddenly, to get out of it, because it is no longer a serious business.

One fundamental you have to remember: if you fight with something you will have to remain on that level to fight; otherwise how can you continue the fight? If you are fighting sex, then you cannot move beyond your instinctive level – impossible – because then who will fight? If you start moving upwards then all those wolves in your unconscious will run amok. You cannot leave that place, you have to be there constantly fighting, repressing. How is transformation possible for a man who is fighting with his own nature? It is impossible.

Take it as a categorical principle; there is no exception to it. With whomsoever you fight you will have to remain with that person, with that state, with that space. But if you are playful, then it is a totally different thing. If you are on the war front you cannot say to the soldiers on the other side, “Now I am feeling tired; we will go home now and start tomorrow.” You cannot say that. If you turn your back that fellow is going to shoot you then and there, and finish all your tiredness.

On the front you cannot do that, but if you are playing with somebody, playing cards, you can say, “Now I am tired. Tomorrow we will start; we can start even from this point where we are stopping.” There is no problem in it, it is only a play.

Let your instinctive world become a playfulness….

And that’s the fear of all the priests in the world. They are condemning me continually for the simple reason that I am giving you a chance to get out of the grip of your instinct. But that is also the grip of the priest; that is also the grip of the pornographer. If you get out of your instinctive level, you are free from the priest, the pope, and the pornographer. The pornographer and the priest are using the same methodology. And they are partners, whether they know it or not, in the same business.

You will be surprised to know that in aboriginal tribes you cannot make anybody interested in a nude, pornographic picture. You cannot make anybody interested. I have lived in Bastar, and gone there again and again… because in India a few tribes are left which are five thousand years old. And they have not kept pace with time; they have stood still. So it is good for a visit into history, five thousand years old; there is no other way to visit history, to go back in time.

But in Bastar it is not the twentieth century. You can touch a woman’s breast and ask, “What are these?” and she will say, “You don’t know? These are tits for children to drink milk.” She is not offended by that, that you touched her tits. She is simply surprised that you don’t know such a simple thing.

They are almost naked. They only wrap a cloth around when they come to the cities, down from their hills, out of their forests; otherwise they are all naked. How can you make an aboriginal of Bastar interested in a Playboy magazine or Stern? He will be simply surprised: “What is this?”

It is like a magazine on fruits advertising tomatoes half-clothed, tightly clothed. A man who grows tomatoes will be simply surprised: “Are these people mad? If you are advertising tomatoes, then advertise tomatoes, but why these strange clothes, tight around the tomatoes?”

These pornographers are using what the priest has done before. The priest is the head partner, perhaps the major shareholder. He represses sex; he makes people interested in sex beyond all rationality – he drives them irrational about sex. Then comes the pornographer, and naturally, the repressed person would like at least to see the photographs. He is not allowed to see living human beings, that is a sin. At least The Bible has not said, “Cursed are those who will see pornography. They will inherit the kingdom of hell.” I think pornographers will be needed in heaven too, because all your monks will die…. They may have already found a way to smuggle in Playboy, Stern, and all kinds of third-rate magazines from around the world.

You may even be surprised to find God looking at a Playboy magazine, because He is the original source of this whole business. And it is natural, because He has not even a girlfriend – what to say of a wife, not even a girlfriend. In the name of a girlfriend he has the Holy Ghost. Just think of yourself with the Holy Ghost as your girlfriend; you would like better to live alone. You would ask the Holy Ghost, “Leave me alone, you go somewhere else.”

The priest creates the business basis: repression. Then the pornographer uses it.

I am destroying their business completely.

-Osho

Taken from From Misery to Enlightenment, Discourse #5

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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