Category: on Upanishads

The Unwavering Mind – Osho

After this the seeker enters the third stage of yoga which is known as non-attachment. He fixes his mind unwaveringly on the meaning of scriptural words.

He lives in the monasteries, ashrams, of saints well established in austerities. He occupies himself with the discussion of the scriptures and sleeps on a rocky bed. Thus it is that he lives his life. Because he has attained peace of mind, the man of good conduct spends his time in the enjoyment of pleasures that come naturally to him from his excursion into the forest. He remains detached, however, from the objects of desires.

Through the ritual of meritorious deeds and the cultivation of right scriptures, he attains that clarity of vision which sees reality. On completing this stage, the seeker experiences a glimpse of enlightenment.

-Akshi Upanishad

The second stage is that of thought – purity of thought, intensity of thought, contemplation, meditation. Thought is energy; it can move through desires to the objects of the world, it can become a bondage. If thought is associated with desire, it becomes bondage; if thought is not associated with desire, freed from desire, thought can be used as a vehicle to reach the ultimate liberation.

The way is the same, only the direction changes. When thought moves to objects, to the world, it creates entanglements, it creates slavery, it creates imprisonment. When thought is not moving to objects but starts moving within, the same energy becomes liberation. The second stage is of thought – to make it pure, to become a witness of it.

The third stage is of vairagya – non-attachment. Non-attachment is very significant, the concept is very basic to all those who are in search of the truth. Mind has the capacity to get attached to anything, and once the mind gets attached to something the mind itself becomes that thing. When your mind is moving towards a sexual object and you get attached, mind becomes sex; when the mind is moving towards power and you get attached to it, mind becomes power, mind becomes politics.

Mind is just like a mirror: whatsoever you get attached to becomes fixed in the mirror, and then mind behaves like a film of a camera. Then mind is not just a mirror, it has become a film. Then whatsoever comes to it, the mind clings to it. These are the two possibilities, or two aspects of the same possibility. Mind has the capacity to get attached, identified, with anything whatsoever. […]

Whatsoever the attachment, your life follows that. In this world, the Upanishads say, we are behaving as if we are hypnotized; we are in a deep hypnosis. Nobody else has done that, we have hypnotized ourselves. For millions of lives we have been attached to certain objects of desire; they have become fixed. So whenever you see a woman, immediately your body starts working in a sexual way. […]

Attachment creates the life; a life is created around whatsoever you are attached to. So the Upanishads say it is basic, the third step of sadhana, that the mind should get nonattached; only then this illusory world that you have created around you will disappear. Otherwise, you will remain in a dream.

The world is not a dream, remember. This has been very much misunderstood. In the West it has been very much misunderstood; they think that these Indian mystics have called the world illusory. They have not called the world illusory; they call the world you have created around you illusory. And everybody has created a world around himself that is not the real world, that is just your projection. You have got attached to certain things, then you project your dreams onto the reality. By nonattachment, reality is not going to be destroyed; only your dreams will be destroyed, and reality will be revealed to you as it is. So nonattachment becomes a basic step, very foundational.

Now we will enter the sutra:

After this the seeker enters the third stage of yoga which is known as nonattachment.

He fixes his mind unwaveringly on the meaning of scriptural words. He lives in the monasteries, ashrams, of saints well established in austerities. He occupies himself with the discussion of the scriptures and sleeps on a rocky bed.

Everything has to be understood. These are old symbols; they have to be penetrated deeply; they are not literal, they are symbolic.

He fixes his mind unwaveringly . . . 

This is the first thing in nonattachment, because a wavering mind cannot get non-attached. Only a nonwavering mind, nishkam, a nonwavering mind, can get nonattached. Why? Look at your mind, observe it: every moment it is wavering. It cannot remain with one object for a single moment, every moment a flux is passing; one thought comes, then another, then another – there is a procession.

You cannot remain with one thought even for a single moment, and if you cannot remain for a single moment with one thought, how can you penetrate it? How can you become aware of its full reality? How can you see the illusion that it creates? You are moving so fast that you cannot observe – observation is impossible. It is just as if you come running into this hall. As soon as you enter from one door you go out from the other. You have just a glimpse, and you cannot know later on whether this hall was real or a dream. You had no time here to know, to penetrate, to analyze, to observe, to be aware.

So fixation of the mind on one content is one of the essential requirements for any seeker – that he should remain with one thought for long periods. Once you can remain with one thought for long periods, you yourself will see that this thought is creating attachment, this thought is creating a world around it, this thought is the basic seed of all illusion. And if you can retain a thought for long periods, you have become the master. Now the mind is not the master, and you are not the slave.

And if you can remain with one thought for long periods you can drop it also. You can say to the mind, “Stop!” and the mind stops; you can say to the mind, “Move!” and the mind moves. Now it is not so; you want to stop the process but the mind continues, the mind never listens to you. The mind is the master and you are just following the mind like a shadow. The instrument – mind is just an instrument – has become the soul, and the soul has become the servant. This is the perversion and this is the misery of human beings.

Try to fix your mind on one thing, anything will do. Sit on the ground outside and look at a tree and try to remain with the tree. Whatsoever happens, remain with the tree. The mind will try many waverings, the mind will give you many alternatives to move. The mind will say, “Look! What type of tree is this? What is the name?” Don’t listen to it, because even if you have moved to the name you have moved away from the tree. If you start thinking about the tree you have gone away from the tree. Don’t think about it, remain with the fact that the tree is.

It will be difficult in the beginning because you are not so alert. You are so sleepy that you will forget completely that you were looking at the tree. A dog will start barking and you will look at the dog; a cloud will come in the sky and you have moved; somebody passes and you have forgotten the tree.

But go on, again and again. When you remember again that you have forgotten and fallen asleep, move again to the tree. Do it.

If you go on working, after three or four weeks you will be capable of retaining one content in the mind at least for one minute. And that’s a big capacity! That’s a big phenomenon! – because you don’t know, you think one minute is not much. One minute is too much for the mind, because mind moves within seconds. For not even a full second is your mind on one thing. It is wavering – wavering is mind’s nature; it goes on creating waves. And that is the way the attachment is retained.

You love a woman. Even if you love a woman, you cannot retain the idea of the woman in your mind. If you look at the woman you will start thinking about her – and you have moved away. You may think about her clothes, you may think about her eyes, you may think about her face and figure, but you have moved away from the woman. Just let the fact remain, don’t think about it, because thinking means wavering. To retain a single content means: don’t think, just look. Thinking means moving, wavering. Just look – looking means nonwavering.

That is the meaning of concentration, and all the religions of the world have used it in this way or that. Their methods may look different but the essential is this: that the mind has to be trained to retain one thing for longer periods. What will happen? Once you get this capacity nothing is to be done. You can penetrate, anything becomes transparent. The very look, and in that look your energy moving, goes deep.

There are two ways for the mind. One is linear, from one thought to another – A, B, C, D – the mind moves in a line. Mind has energy. When it moves from A to B it dissipates energy, when it moves from B to C again energy is dissipated, when it moves from C to D energy has been dissipated. If you retain only A in the mind and don’t allow it to move to B, C, D and so forth and so on, what will happen? The energy that was going to be dissipated in movement will go on hammering on the fact A, and then a new process will start – you will move deeper in the A. Not moving from A to B, but moving from A1 to A2, A3, A4. Now the energy is moving directly, intensely, in one fact. Your eyes will become penetrating. […]

We have become completely unacquainted with the penetrating eye. We know only superficial, moving eyes from A to B, from B to C – just touching and moving, touching and moving. If somebody looks at you, stares at you deeply, and he is not moving from A to B, B to C, you will become scared – but that is the real look. And you will become scared because his eyes are going deep within you; he is not moving on the surface, he is moving deep, in the depth. You will become scared because you have become unacquainted with it.

Fixation of the mind will give you a penetrating eye. That eye has been known in the occult world as the third eye. When you start moving on a point, not in a line, you gain a force, and that force works. All over the world mesmerists, hypnotists, and other workers in the psychic field have been aware of it for centuries. You can try it. Somebody, a stranger, is walking on the road. You just go behind him and look at the back of his neck. Stare. Immediately he will look back towards you, the energy hits there immediately if you stare.

There is a center at the back of the neck which is very sensitive. Just stare at the center and the person is bound to look back because he will become uneasy, something is entering there. Your eyes are not simply windows to look through, they are energy centers. You are not only absorbing impressions through the eyes, you are throwing energy – but you are not aware. You are not aware because your energy is being dissipated in movement, is waving, wavering from one to two, two to three, three to four – you go on, and every gap takes your energy.

He fixes his mind unwaveringly . . .

First one has to try to fix this mind unwaveringly on objects, and then on the meaning of the scriptural words.

This is a totally different science. You read a book. Reading is linear: from one word you move to another, from another to another – you go on moving in lines. You may not have observed that different countries have different ways of writing. English is written from the left towards the right, because English is a technical language, not very poetic, a male language, not feminine. Urdu, Arabic, are written from the right to the left. They are more poetic, because the left side is poetry and the right side is mathematics – right is male, left is female.

Chinese is written downwards; neither from left to right, nor from right to left, just from up downwards, because Chinese was developed through Confucian ideology, and Confucius says, “The middle is the goal, the middle is golden – the golden mean.” So they don’t move from left to right, or from right to left; they move from up to down. This is the middle, the mean, neither male nor female.

English is male, Urdu is female – that’s why Urdu is so poetic. No language in the world is as poetic as Urdu. In any language of the world, you will need hundreds of lines, and then too you will not be able to express a poetic thing. In Urdu just two lines will do and they will stop the heart. It moves from right to left, from male to female – female is the end.

All over the world God has always been conceived of as the father. Only in the East are there a few religions which conceive of God as the mother – but Sufis, Mohammedans, are the only ones who conceive of God as the beloved: not mother, beloved. The feminine is the end. From the male they move to the female, to the feminine, but movement is there.

Chinese moves from up to down, into the depth, so Chinese symbols can express things no other language can express – because every language is linear, and Chinese is in the depth. So if you have read Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching in translation, you know that every translation differs. If you read ten translations then all the translations will be different; you cannot say who is wrong and who is right, because Chinese carries so much meaning and depth that ten, or even one hundred meanings are possible. In depth more and more meanings are revealed.

In India it is said that a scripture like the Vedas, the Upanishads or the Gita, is not to be read in a linear way. You have to concentrate on each word. Read a word, then don’t move; look at the word, close your eyes, and wait for the meaning to be revealed. This is a totally different concept of studying a thing, so Westerners sometimes cannot understand that a person goes on reading the Gita every day for his whole life. This looks absurd. If you have read it once it is finished! Why do you go on reading the Gita every day? Once you have read it, what is the meaning in reading it again?

But Hindus say the Gita is not a linear book. Each word has to be looked at with a fixed mind; in each word you have to penetrate deep – so deep that the word disappears and only silence remains. And the word does not have the meaning, remember – the meaning is hidden in you. The word is just a technical support to help the meaning that is within you to come up. So the word is a mantra, or a yantra, a design which will help you to bring up the meaning which is hidden in your soul.

See the difference. In the West if you read a thing, then the word has a meaning; in the East the word has got no meaning – the meaning is in the reader. The word is just a device to bring the reader to his own inner meaning, to encounter the inner meaning. The word will just provoke you inside so that your inner meaning flowers through it. The word has to be forgotten and the inner meaning has to be carried, but you will have to wait; and mind needs fixation, mind needs concentration, only then the inner meaning can be revealed. So one has to go on reading the same thing every day, but it is not the same because you have been changing.

If a boy of fifteen reads the Gita the meaning is going to be boyish, immature, juvenile. Then a man, a young man of thirty reads the Gita – the meaning is going to be different, more romantic. In that meaning sex will be involved, in that meaning love will be projected, in that meaning the youth will project his youth. And then an old man of sixty reads the Gita. He has passed through the ups and downs of life, he has seen misery and glimpses of happiness, he has lived through much. He will see something else in the Gita; in that something else death will be involved; death will be all over the Gita.

And a man of one hundred, to whom even death has become irrelevant, to whom even death has become an accepted fact, not a problem, who is not afraid of death but rather, on the contrary, is just waiting for it so that the imprisonment in the body is broken and the soul can fly – he looks in the Gita and it will be totally different. Now it will transcend life, the meaning will transcend life.

The meaning depends on the state of your mind. So the meaning of a word is not in the dictionary, the meaning of the word is in the reader, and the words are used as devices to bring that meaning up. But if you go on reading fast that will not help. In the West they go on creating more and more techniques for how to read fast, how to finish the book as fast as possible, because time is short. And there are techniques by which you can read very fast; whatsoever your speed right now it can be doubled very easily, and you can even double it again if you work a little harder. And if you are really persistent you can again double that speed.

So if you are reading sixty words per minute, you can read two hundred and forty words per minute if you work hard – but then you will be moving in a linear way. And if you move fast then your unconscious starts reading, the conscious just gives hints. Subliminal reading becomes possible, but then you cannot penetrate.

The question is not to read much, the question is to read very little but to read deep. The depth is significant, because in the depth quality is hidden. If you read fast quantity will be great, but quality will be no more there, it will be mechanical. You will not be imbibing whatsoever you are reading; you will not be changed through whatsoever you are reading; it will just be a memorization.

He fixes his mind unwaveringly on the meaning of the scriptural words.

In Sanskrit every word has multi-meanings. In the West it will be thought that this is not good; a word should mean only one thing, it should have only one meaning. Only then can there be a science of language, only then can the language become technical, scientific. So one word should have only one meaning. But Sanskrit is not a scientific language, it is a religious language. And if the people who spoke Sanskrit claimed that their language is divine it means something. Every word has multi-meanings; no word is fixed, solid, it is liquid, flowing. You can derive many meanings through it – it depends on you. It has many shades, many colors; it is not a dead stone, it is an alive flower.

If you go in the morning it looks different, if you go in the afternoon the same flower looks different, because the whole milieu has changed. When you go in the evening the same flower has a different poetry to it. In the morning it was happy, alive, dancing, filled with so many desires, hopes, dreams, was maybe thinking to conquer the whole world. By the afternoon desires have dropped, much frustration has come, the flower is not hoping so much now, it is a little depressed, a little sad. By the evening life has proved illusory, the flower is on its deathbed, shrunken, closed, no dreams, no hopes.

Sanskrit words are like flowers, they have moods; that’s why Sanskrit can be interpreted in millions of ways. The Gita has one thousand interpretations. You cannot conceive of the Bible having one thousand interpretations – impossible! You cannot conceive of the Koran having one thousand interpretations – not a single interpretation exists. The Koran has never been interpreted. There are one thousand interpretations of the Gita, and still they are not enough. Every century will add many more, and while human consciousness is on the earth interpretations will be added forever and ever. The Gita cannot be exhausted, it is impossible to exhaust it, because every word has many meanings.

Sanskrit is liquid, flowing, moody, and this is good because this gives you freedom. The reader has freedom, he is not a slave; the words are not imposed on him, he can play with those words. He can change his moods through those words, and he can change those words through his moods. The Gita is alive, and every alive thing has moods; only dead things have no moods. In that way English is a dead language. It will look paradoxical, because English scholars go on saying that Sanskrit is a dead language because no one speaks it. They are right in a way – because nobody speaks it, it is a dead language, but really modern languages are dead.

No one speaks Sanskrit now, but it is an alive language, the very quality of it is alive; every word has a life of its own and changes, moves, flows, riverlike. Much is possible through the play of Sanskrit words, and they have been arranged in such a way that if you concentrate on them, many worlds of meanings will be revealed to you.

He fixes his mind unwaveringly on the meaning of scriptural words. He lives in the monasteries . . .

First, he fixes on the Vedas, on the old scriptures. These scriptures are not just books. They are not written for any other reason than this: they have been written to reveal a certain deep secret. They are not for you to read and enjoy and throw just like novels; they are to be pondered, contemplated, meditated on. You have to go so deep in them that this going into depth becomes natural to you. And they were not written by persons who were writers, persons not knowing anything but just through their egoistic feeling writing things.

Gurdjieff divides all scriptures into two divisions: one he calls subjective, the other he calls objective. These scriptures – the Vedas, the Upanishads, are objective, not subjective. The whole literature that we are creating is subjective, the writer is throwing his own subjectivity into it. A poet, a modern poet, or a painter, a modern Picasso, or a novelist, a story-writer – they are writing their own minds there. They are not concerned with the person who is going to read, remember, they are more concerned with themselves. This is a catharsis for them. They are mad inside, burdened – they want to express. […]

A poet may have dreamed, may have taken hashish. And scientists say that poets have some difference, some chemical difference from ordinary persons – they have some hashish in their blood, really, so they can imagine more, they can dream more, they can go on dream trips more than others. So they write, but their writing is imaginative, it is not objective. It may help them as a catharsis, that they are unburdened.

But there is another type of literature, totally different, which is objective. These Upanishads were not written for the joy of the writer, they were written for those who were going to read them – they are objective. What they will do to you if you contemplate on them has been planned; every single word has been put there, every single sound has been used. If someone contemplates on it, then the state of the writer will be revealed to him; the same will happen to him if he contemplates. These scriptures are called holy; that’s why.

A totally different body of literature exists in the East, a totally different body – not meant to be enjoyed but meant to be transforming. And when one has penetrated deep into the meaning of the scriptures . . . And these scriptures belong to those who have known. It was thought to be a great sin to write something which you have not known. That’s why very few books were written in the past. […]

These writings are from those who have known, who have become enlightened, and they have put in these writings their own mind – the mind is hidden there. If you penetrate, the mind will be revealed to you. And only after that . . .

He lives in the monasteries, ashrams, of saints well established in austerities.

The ashram is an Eastern concept, there is no word to express it in English. “Monastery” is not a good word; ashram is totally different. You have to understand the concept. A monastery is where monks live. There are Christian monasteries – there is no need for an enlightened person to be there; abbots are there, administrators are there. The monastery is like a training school. The abbot need not be enlightened, but he will train you, because they have a curriculum, a course. Christian priests are prepared that way. […]

A monastery is a training school; an ashram is not a school; an ashram is a family. And an ashram doesn’t exist as an institution, cannot exist as an institution. The ashram exists around an enlightened person, that is a basic must. If the enlightened person is not there the ashram disappears; it is the person around whom the ashram can come into being. When the person is dead the ashram has to disappear. If you continue the ashram, it becomes a monastery.

For example, Aurobindo is dead and now the Mother is dead – now Pondicherry is a monastery, not an ashram. It will persist as a dead thing, an institute. When Aurobindo was there it was totally different. The person is important, not the institute – institutions are dead. So remember this: a live phenomenon, a master, just by his presence creates a milieu – that milieu is the ashram. And when you move in that milieu you are moving in a family, not in an institute. The master will take care of you in every way, and you will be there in intimate, close proximity.

Eastern ashrams are disappearing, they are becoming monasteries, institutes. The Western mind is so obsessed with institutes that everything is turned into an institute. I was just reading a book on marriage. It begins by saying that marriage is the greatest institute, the greatest institution – but who wants to live in an institute? The ashram is more intimate, more personal.

So every ashram will differ from others, every ashram is going to be unique, because it will depend on the person around whom it has been created. All monasteries will be similar but no two ashrams can be similar, because every ashram has to be individual, unique; it depends on the personality of the master. If you go to a Sufi ashram it will be totally different – much dancing and singing will be there; if you go to a Buddhist ashram, no dancing, no singing, much sitting silently will be there. And both are doing the same, they are leading towards the same goal.

The first thing to remember: an ashram exists with a master; it is his personal influence, his person, the atmosphere, the milieu that he creates through his being. An ashram is his being, and when you enter into an ashram you are not entering into an institution, you are entering a live person, you are becoming part of the soul of the master. Now you will exist as part of the master, he will exist through you. So no forced discipline, but spontaneous happenings will be there.

He lives in the ashrams of saints well established in austerities.

In the third state it is good to move to someone who has known, to live with him. The first two will make you capable, patra; the first two will make you worthy of having a master look at you, of a master allowing you to be in intimacy with him. Without the first two no master will look at you; you will not be allowed, he will avoid you, he will create situations so that you will have to leave his ashram. Only after these two states, when you enter the third, will you be allowed, because a master is not going to waste.  . . . He cannot work with you unless you are ready, and unless you show readiness.

One sannyasin goes on writing letters to me. He is here, he has again written a letter to me, a very long letter, saying, “Give me the method so that I can move into my past lives.” And he is not capable at all even to live in this life! He will go mad if I give him a method to move into the past lives. Why do you think nature prohibits it? Why does nature create a barrier so that you cannot remember the past lives?

Nature is more wise than you. Nature creates the barrier because even one life is too much; it is a burden. You have to forget many things, and if you continuously remember the past life you will be confused, you will be nowhere, you will not be able to decide what is what. Everything will become vague, cloudy, and the past life will remain on your mind like a burden and it will not allow you to live here and now.

Just think, you are in love with a woman and you remember that in the past life she was your mother! So now what will you do? If you go on making love to her you are making love to your mother, and that will create guilt. Or if you think that she is your mother so you should leave her, that will again create guilt because you love her so much. The whole thing will become very difficult and arduous to carry on. And this is how it is happening: your wife may have been your mother, your husband may have been your son, your friend may have been your enemy, your enemy may have been your friend. You have moved in so many lives, it is very complex. Nature creates a barrier: when you die a curtain falls and you cannot remember.

This man goes on writing to me, “Give me a method.” And now he has threatened, “If you don’t give me a method, I am going to leave sannyas.” If you leave sannyas, what is it to me? And if I give you a method and you go mad, then who will be responsible? And you will go mad – you are already mad, just on the brink; any step further, a little more burden on the mind and you will explode.

The ashram, or the master, will accept you only when you are ready, and he will start working only when a certain thing can be done to you, you have come to a certain state; nothing can be done before it. And this should be the attitude of the disciple – that he should not ask. The master knows what is to be done and you have to wait. If you cannot wait you have to leave, because nothing can be done when you are not ripe for it.

The first two stages make you ripe to be accepted by a master.

He occupies himself with the discussion of the scriptures, and sleeps on a rocky bed.

This is actual and symbolic both. In the old ashrams everybody had to sleep on a rocky bed – actually, also because it helps. In yoga, your spine, your backbone, is very important, and not only in yoga but in biology also. Now biologists say man could become man because he started standing erect, his backbone erect. Animals’ backbones are parallel to the earth, only man has a backbone which is not parallel to the earth but makes an angle of ninety degrees. This changed the whole being of man, this angle of ninety degrees with the gravitation created the possibility for the mind to develop. Now biologists say that just by standing on two feet the animal became human – because it changes the whole thing. Less blood flows in the head, so the head and the nervous system there can become more delicate and refined. When more blood flows in the head the subtle tissues are broken, they cannot grow.

So don’t do too much shirshasana. Unless a master suggests it to you don’t do shirshasana, because I have never seen a person who has been doing shirshasana who is not stupid. You will become stupid. You will become more healthy of course, because animals are more healthy; so if you are just after health, shirshasana is good, do it forever. You will become healthy like a bull but at the same time stupid also, because when more blood moves into the head delicate tissues are destroyed, and those delicate tissues are needed for intelligence. When man stood erect, the possibility developed for more delicate tissues in the head.

You see primitives sleep without pillows, and they will remain primitives if they continue to sleep without pillows, because more blood flows in the night. A more intelligent person will need more pillows. He may not be healthier, but intelligence needs a certain mechanism in the mind, a very delicate mechanism. And mind is very complex; seventy million cells are there, and so delicate, bound to be so delicate, when in such a small head there are seventy million. They are very delicate, very small particles, and when blood flows fast, in great quantity, they are destroyed, they are killed. So biologically, and scientifically also, the spine is the most important thing in man. Your head is nothing but a pole to your spine: you exist as a spine – on one pole is sex, on the other is your mind, and your spine is the bridge.

Yoga worked very much on the spine, because yogis became aware of its significance – that the spine is your life. The angle of ninety degrees will be more exact if your spine is straight, so yogis say that when you sit, sit with a straight spine. They worked out many postures, asanas; all their asanas are based on an erect spine, straight. The straighter it is, the more is the possibility to grow in intelligence, awareness.

You may not have observed: if you are listening to me and you are interested your spine will be straight, if you are not interested then you can relax. If you are looking at a movie in a cinema, whenever something interesting comes you will sit straight immediately, because more mind is called for. When the interesting scene has gone you can relax again into your chair.

In the day the spine has to be erect for yogic postures, and in the night also it has to be trained to be more straight. On a rocky bed it is more straight than on a Dunlop mattress. On a rocky bed it is bound to be straight, because the rocky bed is not going to give way for it. If the spine is erect the whole night it will become conditioned to being erect, so in the day also, while walking, sitting, it will remain erect. This is good. So this is physiologically, biologically, and in the eyes of yogis, very helpful. But this is only one part of it, the other part is symbolic.

Whenever a person goes through suffering, we say he is lying on a rocky bed. And the ashram is going to be a long suffering, because many old habits are to be broken and they are hard; many old patterns are to be broken and they are very fixed. Really you have to be destroyed and created again, and in between there is going to be suffering and chaos. That is the rocky bed.

With a master you will have to move through much suffering. You have got many blocks in the body and the mind; they have to be destroyed, and to destroy a block is painful. Unless those blocks are destroyed you cannot flow, you cannot become spontaneous, your energy cannot rise high, it cannot move from the sex center to the sahasrar, it cannot move to the ultimate center of your being. So many things have to be destroyed and every habit has a big pattern, its own system – it takes time.

If you are ready and you trust your master it will not take so much time, because trusting him you can pass through suffering. If you don’t trust, then every suffering becomes a problem, and the mind says, “What are you doing here? Why are you suffering here? Leave this man, go away! You were happy before.” You were never happy before, but when suffering starts you will feel that you were happy before.

For the real happiness to happen you will have to throw all suffering, you will have to pass through it – it is part of growth. And when all suffering has been passed through, only then you become capable of bliss; for the first time you can become happy. And there is no other way.

Thus, it is that he lives his life. Because he has attained peace of mind, the man of good conduct spends his time in the enjoyment of pleasures that come naturally to him from his excursions into the forest.

This is something very significant. In an ashram, under the guidance of a master, you will have to pass through many sufferings. But you are not to create those sufferings, you are not to be masochistic. Many pleasures will also come. Remember, this is the type of our mind – that either we are attached to pleasure and then we demand pleasure, or we can even become attached to suffering and then we say we don’t want any pleasure. We start having pleasure through suffering, and that is dangerous. That’s the masochistic attitude – you can torture yourself and you can enjoy it.

This is a very deep phenomenon in the human psyche, and it has happened because of some association. Every pleasure is with some pain, so if pleasure becomes intense you will feel pain, and the reverse is also true: every pain has its own small pleasure, and if the pain becomes intense you will feel pleasure. Pain and pleasure are not really two things, the difference is only of degree. […]

But in every pleasure some torture, some pain, is involved. You can move to the other extreme, you can start giving pain to yourself and can enjoy it. Go to Benares, you will see the monks lying on a bed of thorns. They are enjoying it; it is a sexual pleasure. They have left the pleasure part and retained the pain part.

So in the ashrams you are not to make yourself suffer, not to be a sadist, not to torture yourself. You have to be hard just to break the old habits, but there is no need to seek pain, and if pleasures come by automatically you are allowed to enjoy them. An ashram is not a torture house; if pleasures come by themselves you are allowed to enjoy them. They are good. You have to be thankful for them.

Because he has attained peace of mind, the man of good conduct spends his time in the enjoyment of pleasures that come naturally to him from his excursion into the forest. He remains detached, however, from the objects of desires.

He remains detached. Pleasures come, moments of enjoyment come; he enjoys them and forgets them. He will not demand them again, he will not say, “Now I cannot live without these pleasures.” Whatsoever God gives, one has to be thankful but never demanding. He remains unattached to desire.

Through the ritual of meritorious deeds and the cultivation of right scriptures, he attains that clarity of vision which sees reality. On completing this stage, the seeker experiences a glimpse of enlightenment.

Just a glimpse – not enlightenment. This glimpse is known in Japan as satori. Satori is not samadhi, satori is just a glimpse. You have not reached enlightenment, you have not reached the peak of the hill, but standing in the valley when there are no clouds, when the sky is clear, you can look at the peak with snow caps – but it is very far away still. You cannot see when the sky is clouded, you cannot see when it is night, you cannot see if you are standing at such a point from where it cannot be looked at.

These three steps will bring you to such a viewpoint from where the peak can be glimpsed. These three stages will make your mind clear. The clouds will disappear and the peak will be revealed – but this is a faraway glimpse, this is not enlightenment. At the third stage a glimpse comes, but remember well, don’t think that this is enlightenment. And this can happen even through chemical help also. Through LSD, marijuana, or other drugs also this is possible, because drugs can create such a chemical situation within you, they can force such a chemical situation where, for a moment, clouds disappear; suddenly you are thrown to a point from where the peak can be glimpsed. But this is no attainment, because chemistry cannot become meditation and chemistry cannot give you enlightenment. When you come back from the trip you are the same again. You may remember it, and that memory may disturb you, and that memory may make you an addict. Then you have to take LSD again and again, and the more you take the less will be the possibility of even the glimpse, because the body gets accustomed and then a greater quantity is needed. Then you are on a path which will lead to insanity and nowhere else.

So don’t try chemical things. If you have tried them, thank God, and don’t try them again. Once you become addicted to chemical help sadhana becomes impossible, because chemicals seem so easy and sadhana seems so difficult. Only sadhana, only spiritual discipline, will help you grow, will give you growth to the point from where the glimpse is not forced but becomes natural. And it is not lost then – any moment you can look, you know from where to look, and the peak will be there. Occupied in your day-to-day activities, any moment you can close your eyes and see the peak and that will become a constant happiness within you, a joy, a continuous joy. Whatsoever you are doing, whatsoever is happening outside, even if you are in misery – for you have built so many jails – you can close your eyes and the peak is there.

After the third stage the glimpse is always available. But the glimpse is not the end – that is only the beginning.

-Osho

From Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi, Discourse #8

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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Meditation Moving Nowhere – Osho

Now follow the traits of seekers of the second stage, called the stage of thought.

He lives in the care of learned men who explain best what listening, remembering, right conduct, contemplation – dharana – and meditation are. Having acquired knowledge of such scriptures as are worth listening to, he efficiently discriminates between what is duty and what is not, and he knows well the division between a word and the thing it symbolizes.

His mind does not suffer from an excess of conceit, pride, greed and attachment, although externally they are apparent to some extent. He gives up his external impurities as a snake casts off its slough.

Such a seeker acquires the actual knowledge of all these things with the grace of the scriptures, the guru, and the sages.

-Akshi Upanishad

The first stage for the seeker is to create a milieu around himself of the feeling that the ocean is real and waves are just superficial surface phenomena. To live in that oceanic feeling is the first stage. This becomes the soil. Unless this milieu is there, there is no possibility of any growth into the higher realms of being. So remember this: you must be aware more and more of the center, less and less of the surface; more and more aware of the depth, and less and less aware of the circumference. The focus must change from the periphery to the innermost core.

If you continue being involved with the surface you cannot penetrate to the ultimate being, because the ultimate being, Brahman – or you may call it the truth or God or whatsoever you like – the ultimate being is the center of existence. And we exist on the periphery.

This is natural in a way, because whenever you come in contact with something, you come in contact with the periphery, the outermost. This is natural. But don’t remain there – move ahead, move further. Leave the periphery behind and go deep. With everything – with a rock, with a man, with a tree, with whatsoever – always remember that the surface is the outermost body, and this is not the whole. The whole illusion consists of thinking of the surface as the whole.

The surface belongs to the whole, there is nothing wrong in it; but when you get this impression, this identity that the surface is the whole, then there is no possibility of inner growth because then you have to stay with the surface – the surface has become the whole. Don’t allow the surface to become the whole. This is not something which is going against the surface; this is simply going with the truth, with the reality.

The surface will be there. When you have conceived the whole, the surface will be there, but in its right place. Nothing is to be eliminated, only a greater perspective is needed. And when your perspective has become total, everything will be there. This world will be there; whatsoever you have will be there, but in a new harmony, in a new gestalt.

This is something to be understood very deeply, because it happens to persons who are on a religious search that either they get identified with the surface, or they become against it. Then they start thinking that this world is to be negated, the world of the waves has to be denied. Either they think that waves are the ocean, or they move to the opposite pole: they start saying that the waves are illusory, that they are not, that they have to be denied. Both standpoints are wrong. From one wrong polarity, if you jump to the other, the other is bound to be wrong. The truth is somewhere in between, in the middle.

Don’t jump from the waves to the ocean, but rather from the waves and the ocean to just in the middle from where you can see both – the ocean and the waves also. Then your life becomes a synthesis, and when your life is a synthesis the music of the divine is created.

The Upanishads are not against the world. They are for Brahman, but they are not against the world. Their Brahman includes everything, the Brahman is inclusive. This is the first state.

Now follow the traits of seekers of the second stage, called the stage of thought.

The first stage is the stage of feeling, feeling that Brahman surrounds you, everywhere is Brahman. And remember, the seeker has to start from the feeling, from the heart, because only the heart can be the base. The heart is the base of your body, and the heart is going to be the base of your divine body also.

If you go to the physiologist he will say, “Yes, there is a heart, but that heart is only physiological, just a pumping system; nothing more is there – no love, no feeling,” because he dissects the body and he comes only to know the body and the bodily. But everybody, even that physiologist, when in love will put his hand on his heart. If he is frustrated in his love, then he will feel a deep ache in his heart. He cannot explain it. As a physiologist he will say, “This is illusory,” but as a man he also feels the same. And remember, a physiologist is just a specialization, a fragment; man is the whole.

So don’t listen to the physiologist, listen to his totality. When he is in love he feels his heart is filled, something has poured into it, he has become heart-full. We don’t have such a thing, not even such a word – heartful. We say that a man is healthy, healthful; we say a man is mannerly, mannerful – but we never say a man is heartful, or loveful. These words must be created, because these are existential facts. When you are in love, you are heartful, loveful, overflooded, and of that overflooded feeling the heart is the center.

When you are in love, close your eyes and feel where your feeling has its center. It can never be in the head; it is impossible. It can never be anywhere else – it will be just in the heart. The heart is the base of your body, and it is going to be the base of your higher body also. That’s why the Upanishads say that the first stage is of feeling. Thought is not denied, thought has to take its own place – but that is the second stage.

When feeling is there, then thought cannot go wrong. If feeling is not there, thought is bound to go wrong. If you follow thought without feeling, you will become destructive. That’s what happened with Hitler, with Mussolini, with Tojo; that’s what is happening every day with Mao, with all the dictators – the thought is leading them. The heart has been silenced, or as if cut off from their being; there is only thought, and then thought can be destructive. […]

But that doesn’t mean that the Upanishads deny thinking. They don’t deny; they say thought has much to do, but it must follow feeling. The mind must follow heart, only then can it be good. Then it cannot go wrong because the heart will always guide in the right direction. The heart becomes the compass – and the heart has the center of love, and love cannot lead you wrongly.

It happened once, a man came to Saint Augustine and he said, “What should I do? And tell me in short, because I am an illiterate person and I cannot understand great theological things. So just in short, simply, so that I can understand and remember it, just tell me the essence of religion.”

Saint Augustine is reported to have said, “Love, and then all else will follow. And don’t bother about anything else.”

If you love you cannot do wrong. The more you love the more it becomes impossible to do wrong – love cannot go wrong. But your love goes wrong. That simply means that your love is not love. Your love even creates hell, misery; you even become destructive to your lover. Move into any family and you will feel the destruction that love has brought: wife and husband continuously fighting, quarreling, trying to dominate each other, trying to possess each other – really trying to destroy the other.

The wife wants the husband just to be a thing, not a person. The husband wants the wife just to be a thing to be possessed; a beautiful thing of course, but a thing, not a person – because a person needs freedom to be, only a thing can be made totally a slave. A person can never be made a slave, and the more you make a slave of him the less he is a person. And this is happening through love! And Augustine says, Buddha says, Jesus says, “Love, and everything will be right. Love, and you will be on the right path.” Your love is not love.

The more I try to understand people who are in love, the more I see that their love is just a form of hate. They disguise it, they think it is love, but their thinking cannot be believed, because the results show something else. And a tree is known by its fruits, not by the declaration. The tree may declare, there may be a big sign on the tree, a signboard saying “This is an apple tree,” but it is to be known by the fruits. If apples never come the signboard is not worth anything, it is lying. If love gives one the direction towards divineness, then your love cannot be called love because it leads into misery. […]

What is the problem? The problem is that love has to be learned. Love is a creative art; one is not born with the capacity to love, no one is born with the capacity to love. Love is a growth, an achievement, and the finest achievement possible. It is just like music: no one is born playing an instrument, you have to learn it. And the more complex the instrument, the longer it will take. Someone asked Godowsky, “Now you have become a great master of music, a maestro, do you still practice?”

He said, “Yes, if I don’t practice for a single day, I notice things are going wrong. If I don’t practice for two days, then experts in my audience notice something is going wrong. And if I don’t practice for three days, everybody becomes aware that something is going wrong.” Eight hours per day he was practicing when he was a world famous maestro.

And love is the greatest music, and you have to play it upon the most complex instrument – the lover or the beloved. You think you are born with the capacity, so you destroy the instrument. You fall in love with a woman, but you don’t know that that woman is the most complex instrument in the world. You are going to destroy, and when the woman is destroyed she becomes chaotic, she becomes chaos – anger and hatred are bound to be there.

Love has to be learned as an art, the greatest art, the art of life. That’s why we go on talking about love, but love is the most scarce thing on this earth. It happens only once; millions of people are in love and it happens only once – one in a million becomes capable of love. There are reasons. When a child is born, the child has only self-love. And this is natural: he does not know anybody else, he knows only himself. The child is the most selfish being, the most selfish, self-centered being. He exists for himself, and he imagines that the whole world exists to serve him. And because he is so helpless everybody has to serve him, so he is justified. Whenever he cries the mother runs to give him food, milk, help, warmth, love, and he becomes dictatorial.

Every child becomes dictatorial and he knows that everybody follows. Whatsoever his desire it has to be fulfilled immediately, otherwise he goes mad. He is so helpless, and nothing can be done – we have to serve him. His ego becomes strengthened. The mother, the father, the family, everybody around him helps him, serves him, and he feels that he is the center of the world. And almost always it happens that you never grow out of this childhood nonsense. You remain the center, and you think everybody has to serve you.

How can you love? – because love means the other has become the center. Love is a very great jump: you are not the center, the other has become the center. You have become the shadow. Now the other has the meaning, and just to serve him or her is happiness. But this never happens. The husband is juvenile, the wife is juvenile, and they remain with their childhood concept that I am the center and the other has to serve me. This creates chaos, this creates misery and hell. Love has to be learned; it is a growth. When you can throw your ego, only then can you love.

The Upanishads are not against thought, but they have a preference list – love must be first. And we have done quite the opposite. There is not a single school, college or university where love is taught. Only thought is taught everywhere: schools, colleges, universities – they all exist to train you how to think. Nobody trains you how to feel, how to be more loving. And it is simple: if nobody teaches you mathematics, you are not going to learn it; if nobody teaches you language, you are not going to learn it; and nobody teaches you love, so you have not learned it. But you believe that you are a lover, and in search of the right person who can love you. […]

You think you are perfect; you are waiting just for the other perfect person and then everything will be good. This is not going to help; this is impossible. You have learned to think, and that has become the base. That’s why your whole personality is upside down.

The second stage is of thought, the first of feeling. What is this stage of thought?

He lives in the care of learned men who explain best what listening, remembering, right conduct, contemplation and meditation are.

Not only logic . . . . Our schools teach only logic. In many ways they make you argumentative, that’s all. The Upanishads say, the first thing: He lives in the care of learned men.

In the days of the Upanishads teaching was a very intimate phenomenon, a very personal phenomenon; it was really just like a love affair. So students would move all over the country in search of a master with whom they could feel closeness, intimacy, from whom they could feel care – somebody who cared, who loved, in whose presence they could flower. Sometimes thousands of miles would be traveled to find a master with whom to live. That was the first requirement. Teaching was not so important; the teacher was more important. […]

In India in the days of the Upanishads the teacher was the center, and the real thing was not what he was teaching; the real thing was what he was. Just his presence was a deep phenomenon; it helped the person to grow. He cared, he loved, and teaching was secondary, teaching followed. That was also not very important. The important thing was to be near a person who was grownup, who was really an adult. So the way, the method that was followed was really one of the most intricate systems ever developed in the world.

The system was this: that for twenty-five years everybody was to remain celibate, a brahmachari – for twenty-five years, for the first stage of life. Every boy, every girl, was expected to remain celibate for twenty-five years. Not that they were against sex – no, really they were the persons who knew the beauty of sex, and they created a phenomenon where sex could be lived to its utmost, where sex was transformed into samadhi – but they knew the way. Twenty-five years of celibacy would create the energy; you would accumulate energy, enough energy so that sex would become a very deep and penetrating phenomenon.

Now in the West sex has become superficial. It is not more than sneezing – just something to be thrown out of the body, just a type of relief. And it is so: if you don’t have enough energy gathered then sex will become superficial, just like sneezing – a relief, not a transforming phenomenon, not an alchemy.

When you had so much energy, when you had waited twenty-five years and your every cell was filled with energy, then they allowed you to move into marriage and love. Then this experience of love was going to be very, very deep, intense. The intensity depends on energy. This is the law: intensity depends on energy. If there is no energy there will be no intensity; the more energy, the more intense the phenomenon. And if you had waited for twenty-five years, you would have become a tremendous energy, and even in one sexual experience you could attain to the very highest that is possible through bioenergy.

Then they allowed the man to move into family life. For twenty-five years he was to live an ordinary life: to feel every desire, every thirst, every hunger; to fulfill every desire – at least to try for twenty-five years, with intense force. When the person was fifty, then his children would be coming back from the gurukul, from the house of the master. His children would be coming back, and they would then be about twenty-five.

And this was the rule: when a person had reached fifty, about fifty, and his children were back and were going into marriage, he should again become celibate – because it was thought absurd that a father should be making love in the house when the son was making love. This was thought absurd, this seemed childish, because then the father had not grown beyond it. And how could a son respect a father when he felt that the father was just the same as him? If the son was playing with sex and the father also was playing with sex, how could he think that he had grown up? The moment the son was married the father was ready to move beyond sex. So this stage of twenty-five years was called vanaprastha – looking towards the forest. He had not yet gone to the forest, but was now ready to leave, packing.

When the son had reached fifty and was ready to pack to go to the forest, the father would be seventy-five and he would have renounced life. Now he was an old, wise man; he had lived life. And this man would become the teacher. At the age of seventy-five he would move to the forest, he would create a small school around him, he would become the teacher. And this was the thought: that only an old man can be the teacher, because how can one who has not lived life be a teacher? How can one who has not known all – the good and the bad both; one who has not moved through all the ways that life gives you, the right and the wrong both – how can he be a teacher? Only one who has been through desires, who has known the intensity of desires and the foolishness also, who has been into sex and who has gone beyond sex – only such a man can be a teacher, only such a man can teach life.

It was inconceivable that a young man could become a teacher. It was inconceivable. How can he become a teacher? He has not been through life; he is not yet seasoned. One must be with old, wise men, in their care, just near them; such men who can explain what right listening is, right remembering is, right conduct is, right contemplation is, right meditation is. And you cannot explain these things just by reading and studying; only a lived experience can make you capable of teaching.

What is right listening? Shravan, right listening, is the base . . . because when a disciple comes to a master or a student to a teacher, the first thing is to be taught how to listen. Nowadays nobody is teaching how to listen. You go to any school, even in the kindergarten, and they have started lecturing, but no one has ever taught how to listen. Unless you know how to listen, how can you be taught? Sometimes the training for how to listen takes years. Your mind has to be completely silent; only then can you listen. So a master will try to quiet your inner talk, the inner chattering, the constant chattering which is there.

If you are chattering inside, you cannot listen. I am talking here. If you are talking within yourself, how can you listen? Then your mind is just like a radio, and the arrow by which you tune into a station is wavering, or you have caught two stations simultaneously and so everything is a confusion. I am talking here and you are talking within yourself, so there are two stations simultaneously. Everything is in confusion. You cannot learn and you cannot understand – you can only misunderstand. How to listen was the first thing – in ordinary teaching and in spiritual teaching also. How to listen? The first rule is: the inner talk must cease.

It happened, there was one famous Zen monk, Nansen. He lived in a deep forest away from the capital of Japan, Tokyo. One day a professor of the university of Tokyo, a professor of philosophy, came to visit Nansen. He came into the hut and said, “Tell me something about spirituality. Tell me something about the inner self.”

Nansen said, “You look tired after traveling so long, there is perspiration on your head, so rest a little, relax a little, and I will prepare tea for you.”

So the old Nansen prepared tea, and the professor rested. But the rest was just superficial; inside he couldn’t rest. How can a professor rest? Impossible! He goes on talking inside. […]

He rested only bodily; the inner talk continued. But you cannot escape a person like Nansen; he looks inside. So he brought tea, put a cup in the hand of the professor, poured tea, continued pouring, and the tea started flowing into the saucer also. Then the professor became afraid because he was continuing; soon it would start going onto the floor. So he said, “Now stop! Are you mad? Now my cup cannot have any more tea, not a single drop.”

Nansen started laughing and he said, “You are so careful about the tea and the cup, and you know well that when the cup is full not a single drop more can be held in it. And you ask me about spirituality, meditation. You are so full inside, not a single drop can enter. So first go out, empty your cup, and then come back. Unless you are empty, I am not going to waste my energy pouring into you.”

The first thing for right learning, right listening, is to be empty; that was taught. Now education is doing completely the reverse. The first thing is how to fill your mind, and the more your mind is filled the more you are appreciated. Your mind must be clean, pure; inner talk must cease. Only then you can be attentive.

Then right remembering. Remember that only remembering is not enough; you need the opposite capacity of forgetting also. If you go on remembering everything you will go mad. And that is what has happened – you cannot forget. Forgetting is as much needed as remembering. The useless must be thrown out of the mind and forgotten, and only the essential should be remembered.

Right remembering means continuously throwing rubbish out; choosing only the essential, the true, the real, and throwing all that is rubbish. Much rubbish is there. The newspapers are filled with it, the books are filled with it, and everybody goes on pouring his rubbish into you. The first thing for right remembering is: throw the rubbish out, don’t fill the mind with rubbish – unnecessary, nonessential.

Shankara has said that if you cannot make the distinction between what is essential and what is nonessential, your mind will become just a wastepaper basket; useless things will be there – and they are. Right remembering means also right forgetting. Be alert, because every single moment millions of facts are being thrown into your mind. Your mind is taking much information from everywhere. That’s why you cannot sleep: there is so much excitement in the mind, so many things going on. You cannot remember, because you remember so much that the whole capacity, the whole energy, is lost.

When Alexander came to India he was surprised; he could not believe the capacity of Hindu brahmins for memorizing things. He couldn’t believe it; it was almost impossible. It happened that wise men in Greece had told him, “When you come back from India, bring the Vedas, the four scriptures, the supreme-most Indian scriptures. Bring them with you.” Only at the last moment when he was returning, he remembered, so in a village of Punjab he inquired, “Who has got the Vedas?”

They said, “A brahmin family – but it is impossible, they will not give them to you.”

Alexander said, “Don’t you worry about that. I will force them; I will kill them – they will have to give.”

The brahmins’ house was surrounded by the military, and Alexander went to the head of the family, the old man, and said, “I want the four scriptures, the four Vedas, and I will burn the whole house if you say no. You and your four Vedas all will be burned.”

The old man said, “There is no need. I will give them to you, but in the morning. And let your military be there, don’t be suspicious. I will give them in the morning.”

Alexander said, “Why not now?”

He said, “Before giving them I will have to go through a ritual of departure. My family had them for thousands of years, they have become part of our heart, so the whole night we will pray, go through a particular ritual, and in the morning, we will present them.”

Alexander believed the old man. The military was there and there was no possibility that he could escape. But in the morning when he came a fire was burning and the old man was sitting there reading from the last page of the four books. Alexander waited. The old man read the last page and threw it in the fire. Alexander said, “What are you doing?”

He said, “The four Vedas have gone into the fire, but these are my four sons. They have listened the whole night and they remember. You take them.”

Just one listening! Alexander could not believe it. He called other brahmins to check. How could they remember such big books? And they had heard them only once! They repeated verbatim from the first word to the last. Alexander told his wise men, “We don’t know anything about what right remembering is. These Hindus have done miracles. How can they remember?”

The secret is that if you are capable of forgetting nonsense, you have so much energy to remember that anything can be remembered – the energy is the same. For example, if you have one hundred percent energy, ninety-nine percent is involved in nonsense. In the old days, a brahmin had one hundred percent of energy available; then he could remember the Vedas. Whatsoever you remember is always more than the four Vedas, so the capacity is there but you have devoted it to nonsense. Right remembering was taught: how to forget the useless, how to choose the essential, and only remember the essential.

Right conduct: how to behave rightly, a right discipline of behavior – because everything helps you grow. When you behave wrongly you are not doing something wrong to others, you are doing wrong to yourself. When you behave wrongly your energy moves into wrong directions. Outwardly, right conduct may seem like something imposed; it is not.

For example, Gurdjieff used to say – in his institute in Paris, he had written it on the walls in big letters – one motto: “A person is good who respects his father and mother.” In the West particularly this seems absurd. And just this is the definition of a good man, “A person is good who respects his father and mother”?

What was he saying? Remember that life is such that you are bound to hate your father and mother; every boy, every girl, has to hate. This is how it happens naturally, because the father has to say no to many things, the father has to discipline you, the father has even sometimes to be angry with you. He cannot allow you absolute freedom because that would be destructive to you. He has to force discipline, and the ego of the child is hurt; he starts hating.

Every man hates his father unless right conduct is taught from the very beginning; every girl hates her mother unless a right conduct is taught from the very beginning. And if you cannot respect your father, you cannot respect anybody – then the whole possibility of respect is lost. The father is the first point from where respect grows.

If you can respect your father, you will respect many people. If you hate your father, then all father figures will be hated. If you hate your father, you will hate your teacher, because he is also a father figure. If you hate your father, you will hate anybody who is powerful. You cannot love God, because he is the father figure for the whole cosmos.

In the West, first the respect for the father disappeared, and then God was dead. It is not accidental that every religion says, “God, my father, the father of all.” It is not accidental, it is meaningful – but it has to grow from your own father. If you respect your father then all father-figures will be respected, and ultimately you can respect the divine.

If you hate your mother then hatred will become the very base of your life, because the first love has to be learned through the mother. You cannot love a wife if you have hated your mother, because the wife is a woman, and one who hates his mother hates women. And the mother will follow you like a dangerous shadow – every time you look at a woman, the mother will be present there. Really, every woman is a mother, essentially a mother. You cannot love a woman if you hate your mother. Really, you cannot love at all.

Gurdjieff was right; this is the definition of a good man – that he respects his father and mother. This is impossible. Remember, this is not easy. It is one of the most impossible things to respect the father and mother; to respect one’s parents is one of the impossible things in this world. False respect is not meant, just hypocrisy is not meant, but a real respect. That was taught; that was called right conduct.

Respect and love were taught, many other things were taught. Right conduct means to be always happy, blissful in your behavior, to be refined, gentle, to not hurt anybody in any way – because this then becomes the pattern. Right conduct helps you grow, and it helps you avoid unnecessary problems, unnecessary crises. You create many problems unnecessarily, and in those problems and in solving them you waste energy, time – you waste everything. A small problem can become destructive to your whole life. Right conduct means moving in this world in such a way that there is no conflict with others, no conflict arises; moving in this world in such a way that you don’t create unnecessary enemies – the very way you behave creates friendship. This is good for you.

Right contemplation and right meditation . . .

This will look a little paradoxical, because we think meditation is always right, contemplation is always right. That is not the case; you can contemplate on wrong things. For example, when you are angry you contemplate; really, when you are angry you contemplate more. You become obsessed with one thing and you go on thinking around and around it, near it. Try to think about God; contemplate for one single moment and you have moved away to something else. But think about sex and the contemplation is easy; you can contemplate.

There are people who go on doing that. If you give them a picture or a statue of God they will say, “What will this do? This is just a picture.” But give them a pornographic magazine, give them a picture of a nude woman, and they will hide it under the pillow, and when there is no one around they will contemplate. Pornography is contemplation; the mind starts moving around and around a center.

Contemplation means mind moving around a center: not moving in a line, not going from one subject to another, but just sticking to one subject, and the whole energy moving in a circle. When mind moves in a circle around a subject, that subject becomes deep-rooted; whatsoever you contemplate, ultimately you become. Right contemplation means contemplation which will help you to grow beyond desire, which will help you to transcend desire. You contemplate, but wrongly.

This happens with meditation also. You have moments of meditation sometimes. If you are angry and you hit a person, in that moment of hitting all thought stops. You have just become anger; the whole energy is transformed into anger. You are one-pointed, deep in meditation, not a single thought in the mind, no cloud in the mind, the whole mind and energy and body moving in one direction – but that is wrong meditation. Mind has stopped thinking but has become anger – it should become love; it should become compassion.

In sex, meditation happens. A moment comes when you are reaching the climax, a moment comes just before ejaculation or orgasm when mind stops. You become pure energy, bioenergy, just a stream of energy, no-mind. No-mind is meditation. But if you become stuck just in sexual meditation you will not grow. Nothing is wrong in it, but you have to grow beyond it because this sexual meditation depends on the other and anything that depends on the other cannot make you ultimately free; you will remain dependent.

Right meditation means a moment where mind ceases, you have become one energy – but not moving towards the other, not moving in any direction, but simply remaining in yourself. That will become samadhi. Meditation moving towards the other becomes a sexual act; meditation moving nowhere, remaining inside, becomes samadhi. These things are for the second stage. 

Having acquired knowledge of such scriptures as are worth listening to, he efficiently discriminates between what is duty and what is not.

This is called vivek: discrimination between duty, what is duty, and what is not. In the second stage you have to be continuously alert of what to do and what not to do. If you are not alert, you will be in a mess. What to do and what not to do? You have a certain amount of energy. You can waste it in things which are not worth doing, and you can create complexities through doing them.

You talk to someone and then a discussion arises, then the discussion becomes an angry fight – you are wasting energy. And this will create a pattern; the man will try to take revenge in some other circumstances. You have created a karma, a pattern; now it will follow you. But why move into a discussion unnecessarily? Why create an argument? […]

This is how mind functions. A small trigger and it goes on and on – it may go on for eternity if you don’t become aware. Discriminate as to what is to be done, and then you will feel there is a very, very small number of duties. You can do them very well. Discriminate as to what is not to be done, and ninety percent of your acts will drop. They are unnecessary, you could have avoided them. Why get entangled? Remain more and more aloof and do only that which is absolutely necessary. And remember, do it only when it is going to help somebody, otherwise don’t do it.

. . . And he discriminates also between what is the symbol – pada – and what is the thing symbolized – padarth.

This is something to be understood very deeply. Krishnamurti goes on saying that the word god is not God – this is the meaning of this statement. What is a symbol, and what is symbolized? The word god is not God – you can mistake the very word for God – just like the word water is not water. When you are thirsty, I can write in big letters on a paper water and give it to you. You cannot drink it. Even if I do it very scientifically and write H2O, it is useless. You will throw it away, you will say, “Keep your science to yourself. I need water, not H2O.”

The word water and water are two different things, and one who is in search of truth must remember it constantly, because there is every possibility you may become obsessed with words and symbols and may lose contact with reality.

His mind does not suffer from an excess of conceit, pride, greed and attachment, although externally they are apparent to some extent.

The second stage is not the end. There is bound to be some greed, some pride, some attachment, some anger, but one has to be aware and start dropping them from inside. Outside it may not be possible to drop them immediately, because sometimes they are needed also.

In ordinary life, if you cannot become angry you will lose many things. Sometimes just a show of anger will be helpful, but drop it from inside! It has to be dropped from outside also – but later on, when you don’t bother, when nothing makes any difference, when even if you lose something, it makes no difference. But remaining in the world, trying for growth, be aware and alert. Don’t suffer from these things. These are sufferings.

If you have very deep-rooted pride, conceit, jealousy, you will suffer. No one else is going to suffer for it. You continue it in the mind, you suffer for it. Somebody is laughing and you think he is laughing at you – then you suffer. You are conceited, and you are always in search of something to hurt you. You are like a wound, waiting for somebody to touch you and then you will be hurt.

Whenever you feel hurt, remember that you have a wound. Don’t throw the responsibility on the other. Just remember that you have a wound and that man has unknowingly touched your wound. Try to heal this wound and then nobody can hurt you, there is no possibility; nobody can laugh at you. That doesn’t mean that nobody will laugh at you – they may laugh, the whole world may laugh, but you can also join in, you can also laugh with them.

He gives up his external impurities as a snake casts off its slough. Such a seeker acquires the actual knowledge of all these things with the grace of the scriptures, the guru, and the sages.

Continuously you have to throw your old skin just like a snake. Every moment it becomes old, and every moment you have to come out of it; then only can you remain alive. Otherwise, it always happens that you are almost dead before you die – many years before you die. […]

Before you die you will have died many years before. Everybody dies a posthumous death. You can prevent this happening only if you die every moment, if you leave the past completely, jump out of it. Dust gathers, memories gather, every moment you become old. Cast off this old skin just like a snake. Come out of it. Be fresh, young again, and live in the moment. Only then will you be able to know what eternal life is. A dead man cannot know it; only a man who is alive to his full capacity can know it.

Such a seeker acquires the actual knowledge of all things with the grace of the scriptures, the guru, and the sages.

Whatsoever you do will need much visible and invisible help. Sometimes you may not be even aware, but many currents of help are around you, helping you; many sources are just pouring down upon you. You will become aware only in the end when you have achieved. Then you will see that you have to thank the whole universe.

Just think: if Buddha was not there, if he had not happened, if Jesus was not there, if he had not happened, if the Upanishads were never written, if Lao Tzu had not accepted to write down the Tao Te Ching, if there was no Bible, no Koran, no Vedas, where would you have been? You would have been just in the trees; you would have been monkeys. The whole universe has been helping you to grow – known, unknown sources.

You may not be aware, but invisible vibrations are in the atmosphere. Once Buddha is there, the human consciousness can never be the same again. We may forget him completely, we may not even know his name – because many buddhas have been there and we don’t know their names, they were never recorded – but they are there, invisible sources helping you. And when you grow to your totality, then you will become aware that thousands and thousands of hands have been helping you.

That’s why Hindus depict their God with a thousand hands. And you are such a problem that two hands cannot do – thousands even are not of much help. With the grace of the scriptures, with the grace of the master, the guru, with the grace of all the sages, you will achieve. At the second stage this has to become a deep seed within you – the gratitude to all and everything. Even those who have wronged you have also helped you.

Gratitude at the second stage will help you much. And if you become aware, fully alert about this gratitude, then more help will become available. The more you feel the grace and feel thankful, the more grace becomes available to you.

-Osho

From Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi, Discourse #6

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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The Supreme Knowledge – Osho

The sage Sankriti then said to the sun god:
O Lord, please teach me the supreme knowledge.
The sun god said:

I shall now explain to you this most rare knowledge, upon the attainment of which you will become free while dwelling in this body. See in all beings the Brahman, who is one, unborn, still, imperishable, infinite, immutable and conscious; so seeing live in peace and bliss. Do not see anything except the self and the supreme. This state is known as yoga. Rooted thus in yoga, carry out your deeds.

The mind of one who is thus rooted in yoga gradually withdraws from all desires, and the seeker feels blissful while engaging himself each day in meritorious acts. He has no interest whatsoever in the contrary efforts of the ignorant. He never betrays the secrets of one to another, and he occupies himself solely with lofty deeds.

He performs only such gentle acts as do not disturb others. He fears sin and does not crave any self-indulgence. He utters loving and affectionate words. He lives in the company of saints and studies the scriptures. With complete unity of mind, speech and action, he follows them. Seeking to cross the ocean that is the world, he cultivates the above-mentioned ideas. And he is called a beginner, one performing his preliminaries. This is called the first stage.

The sage Sankriti then said to the sun god:
O Lord, please teach me the supreme knowledge.

-Akshi Upanishad

The Upanishads know only the supreme knowledge. What is this supreme knowledge? And why is it called supreme? The Upanishads call that knowledge supreme which is not gathered from without, which is not gathered at all. You cannot be educated in it, it cannot be taught; it happens within, it flowers in you.

The first distinction to be made is that there is knowledge which can be taught. The Upanishads call that knowledge lower knowledge. Precisely, they call it avidya – ignorance with information – because that which can be taught to you remains in the mind, it never reaches exactly to you. You remain untouched, your center remains untouched, your being is not in any way changed, transformed. Only the mind collects it, only the brain cells collect it, so it is the same as when we feed a computer – in the same way your mind is fed.

From the very childhood you have been taught many things. They have not reached you, and they will never reach you. The mind gathers them, the mind becomes filled with them. And the mind is so complex that in a single mind all the libraries of the world can be fed; a single head can contain all the knowledge that exists in this world – but the Upanishads say you will not become knowing through that. It is mechanical, consciousness is not needed for it. If even a computer can do it, then it is not worth it.

What the computer cannot do is supreme knowledge. The computer cannot become self-knowing, there is no possibility for the computer to become self-conscious. That which has not been fed into the computer cannot happen to it, and if the same is the case with man, then there is no soul, then you are also a natural biocomputer. If everything that comes out of you has been fed into you, if exactly the same amount comes out that has been fed in, if nothing new happens within, then you have no soul; then you are a very complex mechanism, that’s all.

So the whole religion depends on the phenomenon of supreme knowledge. Is it possible that something can happen within, absolutely new, which has never been taught to you, which has not been cultivated in you? If something so original happens to you, only that can prove that you have a soul; otherwise, you are simply a brain, a complex mechanism but still a mechanism, and then there is no possibility of any transformation.

The Upanishads call that knowledge supreme which happens within. That’s why religion cannot be taught. You can teach science, you can teach many other things, but you cannot teach religion. And if you teach religion, religion becomes false. That’s what missionaries of all the religions have done to this earth. They have been teaching religion on just the same lines as science is taught, so they fill your mind with certain knowledge and you start repeating that knowledge. You may even start living that knowledge, but you will remain a computer, a robot.

The Upanishads say there is a possibility and there is a way to attain the supreme knowledge. So what will the master do if it cannot be taught? That’s why I say a master is not a teacher. The master is not going to teach you; he is going to create a situation around you, only the situation. He will create devices around you, he will create only the soil – the seed you have already got within you.

The situation can be provided and the seed will start sprouting, the dead seed will become alive. The seed will die, but a plant will come in its place. And this seed, this seedling, this growing plant, will become a tree. But this is something which happens within you. You can be helped, but you cannot be taught.

A master can create a situation around you – just a situation, remember. And whatsoever he teaches is not knowledge, he teaches only how to create the situation. He teaches you methods; he cannot give you the conclusion – he can only help indirectly. That’s why it is such a delicate phenomenon. And only one who has got it within him, one who has passed through all the stages, one who has become a big tree, flowering – only he can create the situation around you. So a person who has not become enlightened himself cannot help you; on the contrary, he may hinder you.

If it was just a teaching, then even scriptures would be helpful: the Bible would do, the Koran, the Vedas, the Upanishads would do. But you can read the Bible, you can memorize it, you can become an expert, you can become a scholar – but you will not become a religious man. Just by memorizing the Bible, Christ is not going to happen to you. The Christ can happen to you only when the situation is created around you, and your own inner seed grows. Religion is not a teaching; it is a growth. And what is supreme knowledge? – when you grow, when you know, when for the first time you have your own eyes to see into reality.

So the first thing: supreme knowledge is that knowledge which happens to you but cannot be taught. The second thing: all knowledge is about something other than you – supreme knowledge is absolutely about you. Or, it may even be wrong to say that it is about you. It is not about you, because whatsoever it is about is about something other than you. It will be better to say that it is you, not about you . . . because many things can be taught about you. It can be asked, “Who are you?” Someone can say, “You are Brahman, you are the divine, you are the absolute, the soul, atman.” But this is about you; this is not supreme knowledge – somebody else is teaching it to you.

When you become knowledge, when you become the knowing center, when your very consciousness becomes the door, then supreme knowledge has happened to you. Mathematics is about something, physics is about something else, chemistry about something else, psychology is about the mind – supreme knowledge is you. No university, no school is of any help. Directly, nothing can be done about it, only an indirect help is possible.

The sage Sankriti then said to the sun god: O Lord, please teach me the supreme knowledge.

He is asking an absurd question: Please teach me the supreme knowledge. It cannot be taught – but that’s how a disciple has to reach the master. The disciple cannot know that there is something which cannot be taught; every disciple has to come to the master and ask to be taught. It is absurd for the master, because he knows it cannot be taught, but every seeker thinks that everything can be taught – even the supreme knowledge can be taught. […]

The supreme knowledge is that which cannot be taught. But the sage Sankriti asked: Teach me the supreme knowledge.

The sun god said:

I shall now explain to you this most rare knowledge, upon the attainment of which you will become free while dwelling in this body. See in all beings the Brahman, who is one, unborn, still, imperishable, infinite, immutable and conscious; so seeing live in peace and bliss. Do not see anything except the self and the supreme. This state is known as yoga. Rooted thus in yoga, carry out your deeds.

The first thing he said was: See in all beings the Brahman. This too is to create a situation, remember. This is not a teaching; this is giving a device. What do you see? You see trees, you see rocks, you see men, you see dogs, you see cows – you see many things, but not one. You go on counting waves but you don’t see the hidden ocean.

The sun god said to Sankriti that the first thing is to see the one. Apparently, there are many, but behind the many the one is hidden. So whenever you see the many, remember this is the surface, not the soul. Penetrate deep; forget the surface and try to know the center, the depth. The depth is one.

Go to the sea, there are millions of waves. You never see the sea, you always see the waves, because they are on the surface. But every wave is nothing but a waving of the sea, the sea is waving through all the waves. Remember the ocean and forget the waves – because waves don’t really exist, only the ocean exists.

The ocean can exist without the waves but the waves cannot exist without the ocean. If there is no ocean there can be no waves – or can there be? Then what will wave in them? They cannot be, but the ocean can be. There is no need for the waves, the ocean can be silent. If there is no wind blowing the ocean will be there, silent.

The ocean can exist without the waves, but the waves cannot exist without the ocean. So waves are just the surface, and waves are accidental – through the action of the winds they have come into existence. They have come into existence from without, some accident has created them. If the wind is not blowing the ocean will be silent and non-waving. So waves are accidents created from without, on the surface; the ocean is something totally different.

And the same is the case with all beings. The tree is also a wave, and the man is also a wave, and the rock is also a wave. And behind the rock and the tree and the man the same ocean is hidden. That ocean is called by the Upanishads the Brahman. The Brahman, the ultimate soul, the absolute soul, is just the ocean. So look at a man but don’t cling to the surface, immediately move to the depth and see the Brahman hidden there.

You can do this. Just try it in this camp. Whenever you have time, sit with your friend, your beloved, your wife, your husband, or anybody – a stranger will do – just sit and look into each other’s eyes without thinking, and try to penetrate the eyes without thinking. Just look deeper and deeper into each other’s eyes. Soon you will become aware that the waves have been crossed and an ocean has opened unto you.

Look into each other’s eyes deeply, because eyes are just the doors. And if you don’t think, if you just stare into the eyes, soon the waves will disappear and the ocean will be revealed. Do it first with a human being, because you are closer to that type of wave. Then move to animals – a little more distant; then move to trees – still more distant waves; then move to the rocks.

If you can look deep down into the eyes, you will feel that the man has disappeared, the person has disappeared. Some oceanic phenomenon is hidden behind and this person was just a waving of a depth, a wave of something unknown, hidden. Try this; it will be something worth knowing. That’s what the sun god said to Sankriti: See in all beings the Brahman, who is one . . . not many.

So wherever you feel any distinction, know that you are on the surface. All distinctions are on the surface; “many” belongs to the surface. In English we have a word, “universe,” that is almost parallel to Brahman. “Uni” means one, but whatsoever you see around you is not “universe.” You may call it a universe, but it is not, it is a multiverse. Many you see, not one; names you see, not the nameless; waves you see, but not the ocean.

This is to create a situation. Look deep and don’t be deceived by the surface, and soon you will become aware of an ocean all around. Then you will see that you are also just a wave, your ego is just a wave – behind that ego, the nameless, the one, is hidden.

See in all beings the Brahman, who is one, unborn . . .

. . . Because only waves are born, the ocean remains the same. The many are born, the one remains the same. You are born and you will have to die; hence the fear of death, so much fear of death, but the Brahman in you is unborn and undying. Everyone is afraid of death. Why this fear? And nothing can be done about it; only one thing is certain in life, and that is death. [. . .]

Once born, death is certain; everything else is uncertain. Why is death so certain? Nothing can be done about it. Science may help to prolong life, but death cannot be destroyed, because it is implied in the very phenomenon of birth; it has happened already. Death is one pole of the same phenomenon of which birth is the beginning, the other pole.

It is just like a magnet: on a magnet you have two poles – the positive and the negative. You can cut off the negative pole, you can cut the magnet in half, but immediately the negative pole will appear on the place where you have cut. Now there are two magnets, and each magnet will have two poles. Before there was one magnet and it had two poles, negative and positive. Now you have cut it into two pieces. The one which has the positive pole will immediately create the negative, and the one which has the negative pole will immediately create the positive. You can go on cutting the magnet, but howsoever many fragments you cut, each fragment will have two poles – because a magnet cannot exist with one pole, it is impossible.

Life has two poles: birth is the positive pole; death is the negative. You cannot destroy, you can at the most prolong. You can at the most make a bigger magnet, but the other pole will be there. You can cut it and make a small magnet, but the other pole will be there. This polarity is absolute. So whatsoever science thinks or imagines, it can never happen. Death cannot be destroyed; through science, remember, it is impossible to destroy death.

Once born you have to die. But right now, behind this ego, the unborn is flowing. If you can look and see and feel the unborn, the fear of death disappears – and there is no other way to destroy the fear.

Death is there and you are going to die, you cannot be immortal as an ego. But if you look deep, and if you can find the depth of your ego where ego is no more, if you can see the ocean beyond the wave, you are already immortal. But that one which is hidden behind was never born and it will never die. Unless you come to know something which is not born, you cannot become deathless.

See in all beings the Brahman, who is one, unborn, still, imperishable, infinite, immutable and conscious, so seeing live in peace and bliss.

Once you can see that, bliss is just the by-product, peace simply happens. And it cannot happen before. Death is there – how can you be at peace? Death is there – how can you be at home? Death is there – how can you rest? Death will create tensions, anguish, worries. Death is there constantly hammering on your head – how can you be silent? And how can you love this existence? And how can you feel grateful to the divine? Impossible! Death is there. You can forget it for moments, but it is hidden; it is always there behind the mind. And whatsoever you do, knowingly or unknowingly, the phenomenon of death influences you. It is always there just like a shadow; it darkens your life.

People come to me and they say, “We are sad, depressed, and we don’t know what the cause is. There is no visible cause for our being sad and depressed. We have everything that life can give, still we are sad and depressed.”

They will remain sad and depressed. They may not know what the cause is; the cause is there – the death always around you, around the corner, waiting for you. And wherever you are moving, you are moving to the death; whatsoever you do, every act, leads you to the death. […]

Whatsoever you do, and wherever you escape, you cannot escape death; wherever you reach, death will be waiting for you there. […]

Fear is there around the heart; the heart is in the grip of the fear of death. And it spoils everything. You cannot really love. When you are in love, death is there. And love is so deathlike that lovers always become conscious of death. If you have loved anyone you will be aware of it. You may not have noticed, but whenever you love someone, the lover is bound to ask, “Will you love me forever?” – the fear of death. “Will you always be with me?” – the fear of death. When you are deep in love you become more aware, because deep in love you are near the heart, and near the heart is the shadow of death. Every beat of the heart is aware that the next heartbeat may not come. Wherever you move, you cannot feel blissful.

Look at a beautiful flower. The beauty of it grips you, for a moment the mind stops; but suddenly you become aware that the flower is going to die by the evening, and just after the beauty of the flower comes the sadness of death. It is everywhere. You will find it moving with you, moment to moment. How can you be at ease? How can you be at peace? How can you live in bliss? Impossible!

The sun god said, “But if you become aware of the one behind the many, if you become aware of the one in the many . . .” If this multiverse disappears and the universe appears, you will be at peace – because then you cannot die. The ocean cannot die, the life energy that is waving in you cannot die. The wave will disappear, but the energy will continue in other waves. That’s what reincarnation means.

All the religions which have penetrated very deep – Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, three religions which have penetrated very deep into the soul of man – they all believe in reincarnation. Mohammedanism, Christianity and Judaism don’t believe in reincarnation, but they never worked very hard; they never penetrated the heart of man very deeply. They remained social phenomena, they were more sociopolitical, less religious. The whole history of Islam is sociopolitical, and whenever anybody in the fold of Islam tried to penetrate deeply, he was immediately destroyed and killed.

For example, al-Hillaj Mansoor: he was a man of the same caliber as Buddha, a man who penetrated deeply. When he came to feel that he is Brahman, he is God, he declared it. He said, “Ana’l haq – I am Brahman.”

But this appeared blasphemy to Mohammedans, and they immediately killed him. They said, “This is impossible. At the most you can be a worshipper, but you cannot become God. This is too much; this cannot be tolerated – a human being declaring that he is God!”

They killed Mansoor, they killed many Sufis. In Islam only Sufis penetrated deeply. Sufism is the central core of Islam, the essential Islam – but Islam killed them. So just to survive Sufis disappeared. They became a secret society and they compromised. As far as their outward behavior was concerned, they compromised with Islam, deep down they remained a very revolutionary sect. But they were not accepted by the society at large; Islam remained a sociopolitical phenomenon.

Christianity also remained a sociopolitical phenomenon. It created kingdoms. Even the pope himself became a king, and he still rules a small kingdom, the Vatican. Eckhart, Boehme and Blake were never accepted, the main current never accepted them – and many were destroyed and killed. Whosoever tried to assert the deepest phenomenon of one’s being, the absolute reality, he was never accepted in Christianity. That’s why they couldn’t penetrate to the phenomenon of reincarnation.

Millions of lives you have had, and if you don’t stop in your stupidities you are going to have millions more. If you stop then waves disappear – you become the ocean. And the ocean is at peace, the ocean is always blissful. So it is not a question of how to put your mind at ease, how to relax the mind. No, that won’t do. It is a question of how to move deep, so deep that the mind is left behind and you reach the base of your being, the very substantial base of your being, and the mind becomes the surface, the waving surface. Only then is there peace and bliss.

Said the sun god:

Do not see anything except the self and the supreme. This state is known as yoga, carry out your deeds.

This is the state of knowing that waves are on the surface and you are the ocean, not the waves; the state of knowing that waves belong to you, but you are not the waves – they are just your clothing, just your body. You are the nameless, infinite ocean. The sun god said, “This is the state of yoga” – one of the most beautiful definitions of yoga.

Knowing oneself as the ocean is yoga. You have met, the meeting has happened. You are no longer separate; you are no longer an island – you have become one with a vast continent of consciousness. This is yoga.

The word yoga means meeting, joining together. The root from which the word yoga comes is the same as for the English word yoke: yoking together, joining together, becoming one. When you feel you are the Brahman, this is the state of yoga.

Rooted thus in yoga, carry out your deeds.

Then there is no need to escape to the forest. The Upanishads were never life-negative, remember this. There is a deep misunderstanding in the West, and it has been created by one of the most sincere men of this age, Albert Schweitzer. He himself was in a misunderstanding and was very confused about Eastern mysticism. He created the idea in the West that the Upanishads are life negative, not life-affirmative. This is wrong, absolutely wrong. The Upanishads are life-affirming. They don’t say, “Move away from life”; they simply say, “Know the deepest life and then act.” They don’t say, “Stop waving”; they say, “Know that you are the ocean, then go on waving.” But then waving becomes a play.

Rooted thus in yoga, carry out your deeds.

These Upanishadic rishis were not lifelong brahmacharins, bachelors. They were not: they were married people, they had children, they had their families. They were not in any way negative; they had not renounced life, remember.

The whole thing became confused because of Buddha and Mahavira – they both renounced life. That too is a way, that too is a way to reach the divine, but because of this the whole Hinduism was misunderstood. And they were so significant, they were the most important revolutionaries in India, that even Hindus started thinking in their way. Buddha and Mahavira impressed the country so much; and they renounced life, they were negative. The negative is also a path.

There are two paths, negative and positive, and you have to choose. Either be totally positive, then you transcend; or be totally negative, then you transcend. Either trust life absolutely, then you go beyond life; or mistrust life absolutely, then also you go beyond life. These are the two paths, the two outgoing doors, the positive and negative – because these are the two poles. And remember, you can jump only from a pole, you cannot jump from the middle.

If I am to go out of this room, I will have to find a polarity. I cannot jump from the middle of this room; I cannot go out from the middle. There is no way from the middle, I have to find the periphery, and from the periphery I can go out.

These are the two poles: life and death, negative and positive. Either affirm life, then you can jump out; or negate life, then you can jump out. If you affirm life then birth becomes the pole, if you deny life then death becomes the pole. Both Buddha and Mahavira were more interested in death than in birth. But Hinduism is not negative, and the Upanishads are not negative, they are affirmative.

Schweitzer became confused because of Buddha and Mahavira. Not only Schweitzer, even Hindus have become confused, because Buddha’s and Mahavira’s impact was so deep, and they impressed the whole country so much, that even Hindus had to think about it. And Shankara, one of the greatest Hindus ever born, became almost a Buddhist in the Hindu fold.

Shankara again impressed people very much. For these one thousand years he has been the soul of Hinduism – and he was just a Buddhist. Shankara’s enemies, Ramanuja, Nimbark and Vallabh, detected him. They said, “This man is not a Hindu at all; he just appears Hindu. He is a crypto- Buddhist, a hidden Buddhist.” And they were right.

Hinduism is totally different from Jainism and Buddhism. The difference, the basic difference, is that Hinduism affirms life. The rishis were not unmarried men, they were householders. They had not renounced, they never renounced anything. You cannot conceive of it. The whole thing has become so distant now, you cannot conceive of these rishis. They were living in life, but living as the ocean, not as the waves. They accepted everything. […]

These Upanishadic rishis lived life, but from a totally different standpoint, from a totally different center. They said, “Life is good, life is a blessing, and to allow the waves is a game, a beautiful game worth playing. And if God has given you the opportunity, play it to the full – but don’t get identified.”

Remember, this is a game. Remember, the earth is nothing but a drama, a great drama, and you are nothing more than actors. Remain a witness within and go on acting. There is no need to escape from actions. Even to think in terms of escape shows that you are afraid, and fear cannot lead you anywhere, only love.

And these rishis loved life. They loved everything that life can give; they loved all the blessings – and there are millions of blessings. They never said that life is dukkha, they never said that life is misery. They said that you can make life a misery, but life is not a misery. You can also make a bliss out of it – it is you, not life.

Rooted thus in yoga, carry out your deeds.

The mind of one who is thus rooted in yoga gradually withdraws from all desires, and the seeker feels blissful while engaging himself each day in meritorious acts. He has no interest whatsoever in the contrary efforts of the ignorant. He never betrays the secrets of one to another, and he occupies himself solely with lofty deeds.

The mind of one who is thus rooted in yoga gradually withdraws from all desires. Desires are not to be left; rather you have to be rooted in yoga, then you will withdraw by yourself and the happening will be spontaneous. There is no need to kill desires, there is no need to fight with desires; the only thing is to know your oceanic state, your Brahman state, the one, and then get rooted into it.

The more you are rooted in it, the less and less desires will be there. But you have not renounced them; rather on the contrary, they have left you, because desires become uninterested in one who is rooted in himself. Desires leave him, because now they are not welcome guests. If they come, he accepts them, if they come, he is not going to destroy them and fight with them – but he is not interested. He has higher blessings with him now, the lower don’t attract him. If they come, he accepts, if they don’t come he never thinks about them. By and by the life energy moves more and more within, withinwards; desires disappear.

Remember this distinction: in Buddhism and Jainism, desires have to be left consciously, effort has to be made to leave them and when you leave them you will be rooted in yourself. In Hinduism it is just the contrary: get rooted in yourself and desires will leave you. Buddha is negative: leave the desires and you will be rooted in yourself. Hinduism is positive: be rooted in yourself and desires will leave you.

It works both ways – it depends on you. If you are a negative type, a person to whom no comes easily, then follow the negative path. There are persons to whom no comes first, even if they want to say yes. If no is easy to you nothing is wrong in it; you are a negative type, that’s all. Follow the negative path, say no to life so that you can get rooted in yourself. But if you are a yes type, then no is not your path. Then say yes to life, move with life, get rooted in yourself, and by and by desires will disappear.

And the seeker feels blissful while engaging himself each day in meritorious acts.

Whatsoever such a person does is meritorious, it is punya, it is holy, it is sacred. Whatsoever is done by one who is rooted in himself becomes worship, it is meritorious, because now he engages in it just as a play, just as a life-game. He is aware that it is only overflowing energy that moves into acts; he is not interested in doing anything or reaching any goal. His action is not work; his action is play – then the seeker feels blissful.

Whenever you are in play you feel blissful, and if your whole life becomes a play, you cannot imagine how blissful you can become. Why do you feel blissful while you play? Even when playing cards, you become blissful, the misery disappears. Why? When playing a game – football or hockey or anything – why do you become so blissful? Why do you feel so much joy bubbling in you? What happens?

And side by side with you there may be a professional player; he is not happy. He is not happy because he is just doing work. If you are paid for your cardplaying you will not be happy, because then you are not interested in the game, you are interested in the salary, and it has become a boredom. You have to do it to get the salary. Then the end is not in it, it is only a means.

This is the difference between work and play: work means the end is not in it, and you are interested in the end. If you can reach the end without this work, you would like to leave it. You have to carry it as a burden, it is a compulsion on you. Somehow you have to finish it and reach the goal.

Play is totally different; the end is in it, it is intrinsic. There is no goal, you are not going anywhere. You are enjoying the very thing. Think about it. A professional player becomes sad. It is something to be carried out, to be finished soon – the sooner the better.

The Upanishadic rishi is just the opposite. Even in profession he is a player; even in profession, in business, in whatsoever he is doing, in whatsoever life has created for him to do, he is a player, he goes on playing. He has no business to do, that’s why he is never busy. There is nothing to be done, there is no hurry. If everything is left unfinished there is no worry because it is okay, it was just a play, it ended in the middle – really there was no end to be achieved. This is the attitude of the positive path.

The seeker feels blissful while engaging himself each day in meritorious acts . . . He performs only such gentle acts as do not disturb others.

When you are playing there is no need to hurt others, but when you are busy with a business you don’t care for others. Rather, you will use whatsoever means are to be used, even if the others are to be destroyed, because it is not a play, it is a serious business. Whosoever comes in your way has to be destroyed and thrown out of the way. In business you are violent, and a mind which is businesslike can never be nonviolent.

That’s why I go on saying that Gandhi cannot be nonviolent – he’s so businesslike. Even his nonviolence is a business, he is so serious about it. He is not in a play; he is deadly serious. That’s why he appealed to us so much: we are all businessmen and he was the supreme, the top. He appealed to us, he had appeal for everybody all over the earth, East or West. He appealed deeply, he appealed to the business mind. He was mathematical, calculating, serious with every penny – not in any way in a play.

He was not a Hindu; he could not be. He was ninety percent a Jaina and ten percent a Christian – negative, businesslike, serious. He was not like Krishna – playful, enjoying, nonserious. Whatsoever happens Krishna is not worried. He is not going to force anything on the course of life. Wherever life leads is the goal – wherever. If life leads to death in the middle of a stream, that is the goal – nowhere to reach.

A non-achieving mind is playful. An achieving mind, always thinking of achieving something, whether in this world or the other, is a business mind.

He performs only such gentle acts as do not disturb others.

When you are playing there is no need to disturb anybody. When you are playful you are nonviolent.

He fears sin, and does not crave any self-indulgence.

But the concept of sin in Hinduism is totally different from that of Christianity. Remember, the word pap, sin, has a different connotation. The Upanishads say that which is against the law is sin, just a natural phenomenon. Christianity says that which is disobedience to God is sin. This is absolutely different: disobedience to God.

In Christianity God is something like an aristocrat, something like a dictator; we can paint him just like Hitler or Mussolini. You disobey, and you will suffer and he will punish you. And he is very ferocious in punishment. For small sins, sometimes even when you are innocent, you will be thrown into hell. And Christianity says that it is forever and forever, the hell is eternal. That doesn’t seem to be justified. A small sin, falling in love with a woman, and you will suffer forever and forever.

And what did Adam do? – just a small disobedience; something that God prohibited. God said, “You are not to eat the fruit of this tree, the tree of knowledge. You can eat all the fruits available in this garden of Eden, but don’t come near this tree.”

And it is human to be attracted to something which is prohibited. Adam is so human and lovely; he must have become curious. If he was absolutely stupid, only then could he have followed. Even a little intelligence will say that something is there, otherwise why should God prohibit? If God had prohibited him from eating the snake, then Adam would have eaten the snake and been finished with the Devil. But he prohibited the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and then Adam was expelled from Eden because he disobeyed.

Christianity therefore is conformist; revolutionaries cannot be allowed. Adam was the first revolutionary. And why should God feel so offended for such a small thing? The Christian God cannot be playful. He is serious and ferocious, and he will take revenge. Hinduism cannot conceive of that: God taking revenge on innocent Adam who was just being curious. There was nothing else, he was just curious to know. And the Devil was able to persuade him. The Devil said, “God has prohibited you, because if you eat this fruit, you will become God-like, and he is afraid and jealous.”

This is the sin in Christianity – disobedience. In Hinduism there is no question of disobedience or obedience. It is a simple natural law; just as water flows downwards, if you follow natural laws, you will be happy. There is no one to decide it, it is a simple happening – if you follow natural laws, you will be happy. If you don’t follow natural laws, you go against them, you will be unhappy. Nobody is taking any revenge, and you are not going to be thrown into eternal hell. If you don’t follow, for the time being you will suffer. Immediately you come back to the law the suffering stops.

A simple thing: if you put your hand in the fire you will be burned. No God is deciding, “I prohibit you. Don’t put your hand in the fire, otherwise I will take revenge.” Nobody is there, it is just the way fire behaves. You have to know that if you put your hand in you will suffer. Don’t put the hand in and you don’t suffer. And then you can use fire to heat the room, to cook food, and the fire becomes your help – you can use it. Natural laws can be used if you know them well, flow with them; if you go against you suffer.

Sin is going against a natural law, not against any God. No one is giving you suffering, you are choosing it by moving wrongly. And no one is going to give you bliss, you will choose it by moving rightly. So it is not a question of good and bad, it is a question of right and wrong.

He utters loving and affectionate words. He lives in the company of saints and studies the scriptures. With complete unity of mind, speech and action he follows them. Seeking to cross the ocean that is the world, he cultivates the above-mentioned ideas. And he is called a beginner, one performing his preliminaries. This is called the first stage.

Remember, all this is just the beginning, just the first step of creating the situation. This is not the end – just the preliminary, just the first step.

-Osho

From Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi, Discourse #4

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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The Eternal Play of Existence – Osho

He knows it who knows it not, and he knows it not who knows it. To the man of true knowledge, it is the unknown, while to the ignorant it is the known.

Indeed, he attains immortality who realizes it in and through every bodh – pulsation of knowledge and awareness. Through the atman he obtains strength and vigor and through its knowledge, immortality.

For one who realizes it here, in this world, there is true life. For one who does not so realize it, great is the loss. Discovering the atman in every single being, the wise ones, dying to this world of sense experience, become immortal.

-Kenopanishad

Knowledge of the Brahman is impossible but knowing is possible. Knowledge and knowing are basically different. A very subtle difference has to be understood. Knowing is always in the present, knowledge is of the past. Whenever you say, “I have known,” it means that the experience has become past, it has become part of your memory. When you say, “I am in a process of knowing,” the experience is still continuing; you are still in the experience. It is not part of your memory. Your being is still involved in it.

As far as the world is concerned, the knowing stops. It becomes knowledge. That accumulated knowledge is known as science. Whatsoever man has known becomes science. Science is knowledge. Religion never becomes science because religion is an eternally continuing process of knowing. You never come to a point where you can say, “I have known.” The Brahman never becomes the past; it is always the present. The ultimate cannot be reduced to the past; it cannot be reduced to knowledge. It is always a riverlike flow of knowing.

So you cannot say you have experienced God because that means it is a past thing. It means you have transcended it – that you have already experienced and gone beyond. You cannot go beyond God, so you can never say meaningfully that you have known, that you have experienced. You cannot put him into the past; he cannot be made part of your memory. You can be in a process of experiencing but it is never experience; it is always experiencing. A lived process is never a dead memory.

It is just like this: you cannot say, “I have breathed.” You are breathing. Breathing cannot become past. If it becomes the past, you will be no more. There will be no one to say that he breathed. Breathing is always a continuous process. You are always breathing – it is in the present. You cannot say, “I have lived,” because then who are you? You are life, but you cannot say, “I have lived.” Life is a continuous process. It is always here and now in this very moment. The ultimate means the ultimate life, the ultimate breathing, the ultimate experiencing, the ultimate knowing.

So the first thing to be understood is that the Brahman cannot be reduced to knowledge. So whosoever says, “I have known,” the Upanishads say is ignorant. He is insensitive to the great mystery of life. Whosoever says that he has known has not known. He may have known through the scriptures; he may have known through others; he may have gathered information. But he has not known, because one who knows will know that God can never be reduced to knowledge. He remains a process.

God is not a thing. A thing can be known. God is a process. A thing means something which has stopped. A process means something that goes on and on and on. In the ordinary mind we always think of God as a thing. God is not a thing, it is a flow, a continuum. It goes on eternally, never stops, never can stop. Non-stopping is the very nature of it, so how can you know a process? The moment you say, “I have known,” you have stopped – and the process goes on. You have stopped in your knowledge and the process goes on: you are lost, your contact is lost. Now you are no longer in touch with the process.

You will have to move with the process. You cannot stop. Stopping is not possible with the divine. You can stop but the divine cannot stop. And when you stop and the river goes on, you have lost contact with it; you are no more in living touch.

So those who say that they have known have lost contact. Really, they have not known. They have gathered information. Intellectually they have conceived of something, but they have not lived, because one who lives will come to know this is a river, eternally going on and on. You have to flow with it. A single moment of stopping and the contact is lost. You can never say, “I have known.” You can only say, “I am knowing.”

Knowing is an open thing; knowledge is closed; knowledge has come to a full stop. Knowing is a growing thing, it grows. So knowledge is dead, it has already stopped. It is not breathing now, the blood is not flowing in it; the heart has stopped beating, it is dead. Knowledge is a corpse and if you carry knowledge, you are carrying a corpse, a dead body. That is why pundits, scholars, those who think they know, are dead men. Even sinners have entered the divine, but it is unheard of that any pundit has ever entered the divine. A sinner can enter, but a man who is knowledgeable, who thinks he knows, cannot enter.

In the eyes of the Upanishads the real sin is knowledge, because that is the only barrier. But it is very subtle, and you have to understand the meaning. Knowing is allowed; knowledge is not allowed. Move with the divine moment to moment, alive, in touch, open. Do not say, “I have known.” Simply say that I am aware, experiencing, knowing. Everything is open, and I do not know what is going to be revealed the next moment, so I cannot close, I cannot say that now it is finished, and the end has come. There is no last chapter, there is no last page. The scripture is endless. You cannot close it and every moment something new is revealed because the divine or God or Brahman is every moment new, fresh, young. Only we get old, and we get old because of knowledge.

It is not simply the body which gets old. The body will get old, but your consciousness need not get old. If it gets old, it means that you have gathered knowledge. Then the weight of knowledge makes you old. Otherwise, your eyes will remain innocent, virgin. You will be open, and that openness is virginity. You will be seeking and searching. You will be inquiring and meditating and contemplating. You will be always ready for the new to happen because it is happening every moment. God is never old. If God is old then someday, he will have to die because oldness leads to death.

The Brahman is always young, evergreen. Oldness is not known there, that is why there is no death to it. Existence is always green, alive, pulsating. With knowledge you become old. The moment you say, “I have known,” you have stopped knowing. You think that you have experienced and the experiencing stops. From that moment on you are not growing. You are a dead seed.

The Upanishads believe in knowing, not in knowledge. What is this knowing? And what is the process of knowing? With knowledge you gather the past. In knowing you disperse it – you go on dispersing it. Whatsoever is known must be thrown away so that you are open again to know anew. You must die to the past; only then can you be alive to the present.

We all live in the past – that which is no more, that which has gone, that which is dead. We live in that past; that is why we are so dead. Life is always in the present and mind is always in the past; that is why mind cannot know life. There can be no meeting ground. There is no common ground where mind can meet life. Hence, the Upanishads are against mind.

Mind is always the memory – that which you have lived, that which is past, that which is no more. Mind is just the past dust gathered upon you. Throw it away. Wash it away so that you are fresh, young, and you can meet the present, the ever young – the ever young Brahman.

In knowing, the past has to be constantly renounced. This is the basic renunciation. Die to the past so that you can be alive in the present. You cannot do both. If you are alive in the past, then you will be dead in the present. If you want to be alive in the present, be dead to the past. Each moment go on throwing the past dust. Do not allow it to gather. Go on renouncing it, go on throwing it. It is of no use. You have already used it, now it is just a dead shell. The bird has flown away from it. Do not go on collecting dead shells. They will become the imprisonment; they will hamper you. They will become so weighty that they will not allow you to move.

To me, a sannyasin, one who has renounced, means not that he has renounced wealth, not that he has renounced his house, not that he has renounced family, but one who has renounced the past – because that is the basic wealth. That is your family; you go on living with the dead.

I have heard once it happened that Jesus was passing. It was just morning and the sun was about to rise, and he saw a fisherman throwing his net on the lake. So he spoke to that fisherman. He came near him and told him, “Why are you wasting your life just catching fishes? Follow me and I will show you how to catch the kingdom of God in your net.”

The fisherman looked back. There was a different type of light in the eyes of Jesus. The man was hypnotized. He threw down his net and followed Jesus. But just as they were passing out of the village a man came running and asked the fisherman, “Where are you going? Your father has died.” His father was ill, very old. Any moment it was expected that he would die.

So the fisherman said to Jesus, “Jesus, allow me a few days so that I can go back and pay my respects to the old man who is dead and do all that is needed and expected from a son.”

Jesus said, “You need not go. The dead will bury the dead.” To Jesus the whole village was dead. So he said, “They will bury the dead; you need not worry about it.”

Why did Jesus say that the dead will bury the dead? Because all those who live in the past, they are dead. Only those who live in the present are alive. Life means the present, the here and now. It is a very fleeting moment. You can catch it only when you are totally unburdened; otherwise, you will miss. If your mind is moving toward the past, you will miss the fleeting moment of life. It is so momentary, it is so fleeting, that if you are attached to the past you will go on missing it.

And this is happening. Even when you are not thinking of the past, you are thinking of the past reflected in the future. But you are never in the present, that much is certain. Either you are in the past, which is no more, or in the future which is yet to be. Both are not, both are non-existential. One is dead and one is not yet born. And whatsoever you think of the future is just a reflected past, a projected past, because what can you think of the future? You can think of the tomorrow only in terms of the yesterday because you do not know any other language.

You loved someone yesterday, now you think to love him tomorrow. It is going to be just the past again repeated with some modification. And those modifications also come from past experience. Nothing new can be projected into the future. Only the past can be projected. So you move like a shuttle between the past and the future, and in this constant movement the fleeting present, that which is life, is missed. And only through life can you enter the Brahman.

The Upanishads say do not be attached to knowledge, do not be attached to memory, do not be attached to the past. Go on dying to it so that you are ever young, fresh, virgin. Again and again, you are open. No past becomes an imprisonment around you. You always move on and leave the dead shells to the past.

The sutra says:

He knows it who knows it not . . . 

He who has not made it a knowledge – only he knows it who is still in the process of knowing, who is still searching and inquiring, who is still not closed, who is still going onward, still flowing. And this is going to be eternally so. No one ever reaches the goal; no one can reach the goal. Life really has no goal. It is just an eternal play – beginningless, endless. Man creates the goal. Why?

Man creates the goal because then he can be at ease. The goal is achieved and now you can relax. Now you can be dead; now you are not needed. Life really has no goal. It is just an eternal play – beginningless, endless. Man creates the goal. Life has no goal. It creates many goals, but those goals are just temporary. Every goal is just a means to a further goal, and ultimately there is no goal; otherwise, the Brahman would have stopped at any time, because the goal must have been reached.

Existence has been existing beginninglessly. Any time it would have happened that the goal was achieved, the goal would have stopped. It has not happened so; it will never happen. ‘Goal’ is a human creation. Life is goal-less; that is why it is eternal. If there is a goal then life cannot be eternal, because when the goal is achieved life is dead. All goals are just temporary. When you can realize this, you have realized the Brahman – the purposeless energy moving goallessly, moving everywhere but not moving to somewhere, moving toward nowhere. The movement is beautiful in itself; it is blissful in itself. The bliss is not somewhere in the goal, it is here and now, just in the movement, just in the pulsation of being alive.

When you look at a Buddha sitting under a bodhi tree, or you look at a Jesus on the cross, or you look at Mahavira standing under the skies, a question must arise in your mind about what they are doing. It cannot be conceived that Buddha would be thinking about some business – he has no business. He is not thinking about his family – there is no family. He is not thinking about the future – what can he think about the future? What is a Buddha doing under a bodhi tree? He is not doing anything. He simply is. The very happening of life, the breathing in and out, the very pulsation of being alive, is blissful. He is not doing anything else. He is simply in bliss.

But whenever you think about bliss, you always think as if bliss is something which he possesses in his hand. It is not something, it is just a way of existing – the right way of existing. There is no past and no future. Just under the bodhi tree . . . this very moment, the Buddha is simply alive. The heart is beating, the breath is coming in and out, the blood is circulating, and everything is alive, pulsating. He is not moving anywhere, he simply is. In this isness is bliss.

Hence, the emphasis continuously that when you do not desire you will be blissful. Why? – because desire leads you somewhere else. Desire does not allow you to be here. Desire says go on somewhere else; the goal is there in the future. Desire creates the future and forces you toward the future. When you are non-desiring, when there is no desire, you are here and now. You are under the bodhi tree, you have become a buddha.

A buddha means a state of consciousness – a state of consciousness which is not going anywhere to achieve any goal. Because of this realization, Buddha said, “There is no God.” Just because he was so compassionate toward you, he said there is no God, because if he says that God is then you will make a desire out of him. You will want to achieve him. You would like to reach God, you would like to know God, so you will create a desire.

So Buddha says there is no God, so drop all spiritual desire. Not that there is no God, but he says this just to help you drop all desiring and all future. Otherwise, you go on changing the future. Sometimes the desire is worldly, sometimes it becomes spiritual, but the desiring remains the same.

Buddha says there is no moksha; there is no state of total freedom somewhere in heaven. There is no moksha. Not that there is no moksha, but he says this just to help you; otherwise, you will start desiring moksha, the liberated state – and desiring is the bondage. So when you desire moksha, liberation, you are still in bondage. He says this just to help you to drop all desiring so that you can be here and now.

People go on coming to Buddha and they ask, “What will happen when we die?”

Buddha says, “Nothing will happen. You will simply die.”

They are asking him to create a future even beyond death. They are not satisfied; this much future is not enough. They want some more future beyond death so that they can project their minds more and then they can desire, and they can plan what to do after death. They go on insisting. In every village where Buddha moves, they go on insisting, “What will happen to an enlightened one, to you when you die?”

Buddha says, “Nothing will happen. I will simply die. As the flame of a lamp ceases to be, I will cease.”

They are not satisfied; they feel uneasy. They say, “But where will the flame go? Will it meet the Brahman? Will it become cosmic? What will happen to the enlightened soul?”

Buddha is hard. He says, “Nothing. Just a flame is put out. Do you ask where the flame has gone? No one asks where the flame has gone because everyone knows it has just ceased.”

The word nirvana means cessation of the flame. He never uses the word moksha, he never uses the word heaven, he never talks about paradise, he never uses any word that can create future. He simply says nirvana. Nirvana means that the flame ceases to be. Do not ask what happens, “Why? Does the flame really cease to be?” It never ceases to be but just through his compassion he is telling a lie because the truth will create a desire in you.

If he says there will be bliss – satchitananda – if he says there will be bliss, existence, and consciousness, or if he says there will be a kingdom of God, then a desire will be created. And if the desire is there, there is not going to be any kingdom of God. Cessation of desire will bring you here and now. There is no possibility to move in the future; you are thrown back to the present. And once you are thrown back to the present you are in paradise. You will be in the divine, you will become one with the Brahman.

The Upanishads say:

He knows it who knows it not.

Do not create any memory; do not help to create the past. Go on dropping it. You have used it, why go on carrying it? Do not make it a knowledge.

People come to me and they say, “Yesterday the meditation was just wonderful.” You have become non-meditative because of yesterday’s meditation. Now that man will go on looking for yesterday to be repeated today. He will wait. He will not be meditating; he will not be totally in it. Part of his mind will be looking backwards to see when that will happen again – and it will not happen. His mind was totally in the moment; now it is not. Now he is looking backwards; he has brought in a new thing. Now the situation is not the same. He is not totally in it; he is expecting a result. It will not happen and then he will come to me and say, “What has gone wrong? Yesterday it happened but today it didn’t happen and I am feeling very frustrated.”

The mechanism is simple. Yesterday it could happen because you had no past about it. Remember, you had no past about it, no expectation about it. You couldn’t project any future because you didn’t know anything. You were ignorant, so it happened. You were simple, innocent, in the moment – just doing it without having any expectation for a result because the result was unknown.

Now it is known. It has happened, it has become the past. Now it is your knowledge. Now this knowledge will become the barrier. Now you can do whatsoever you like but it is not going to happen. Knowledge becomes the barrier; the past becomes the barrier to the present. So if it happened yesterday, forget it. Drop that yesterday.

Remember one thing more: you will be frustrated if it is not happening. And you will be frustrated even if it is going to happen because it is just going to be a repetition. You will get fed up. You will get fed up even with your meditation if it goes on repeating, being the same. Drop the past because if the past is there it is not going to happen. And even if sometimes it happens, it is just going to be a repetition of the past and you will get bored. In both ways the past goes on interfering with the present.

Why do you feel it is a repetition? You feel it is a repetition because you go on comparing with the past. If you drop the past, it is always new; it is never a repetition. Repetition means you are constantly comparing it with the past experience. Drop the past completely and you will be opened to the present. Then whatsoever happens will be new and you will never get bored.

Everyone is bored because of this nonsense of bringing in the past again and again. You kissed your beloved yesterday and now you kiss again and you compare. The very beauty of the kiss is gone because it is just a repetition. Sooner or later, you will get fed up. Sooner or later, you would like to escape from your beloved. She will look like an enemy because now she has become a situation where everything looks like a repetition. Forget the past. It is killing you. It is killing your love, it is killing your life, it is killing every possibility. Drop the past. Do not make it a knowledge. Be fresh again and again. Every moment move and do not carry the past.

He knows it who knows it not and he knows it not who knows it who says that “I know.” This is the indication that he has stopped knowing. Knowledge is complete; the book is closed. This man is dead. A dead man cannot be in contact with a live force.

To the man of true knowledge it is the unknown, while to the ignorant it is the known.

Go anywhere on the earth: there are churches, temples, gurudwaras, mosques. Everyone is worshipping there; the whole earth seems to be religious. Everyone ‘knows’ about God and life is such a misery, such a suffering. Everyone ‘knows’ about God – not only knows: everyone argues about him.

There are two types of ignorant people: one who says God is and they argue for him, and another who says God is not and they argue against. But both believe that they know. Theists, atheists, both believe that they know. In one thing they both agree – that they have knowledge. Not only this: they try to prove that they have the true knowledge.

The Upanishads say that only ignorant people can claim that they know – that the divine has become known; that the mystery is solved; that now there is no mystery but a theory, a philosophy, a scripture; that now there is no mystery, and everything is known. Only ignorant people can do this. They can kill the mystery by asserting that the ultimate is known. Those who are wise will insist that the mystery remains a mystery. Even if you come to face it, encounter it, even if you come to meet it, the mystery is not solved. On the contrary, it is deepened more. It becomes more mysterious; it goes on becoming more and more mysterious. The more you know, the more it becomes unknown.

This is the mystery of religious knowing. The more you know it, the more it becomes unknown – the more you feel how impossible it is to know, how difficult it is to know. The more you know the impossibility of this, the more you become aware of your incapacity, your helplessness, your ignorance. The more and more God becomes unknown – then the nearer you approach. And when someone really enters the divine, he comes to know that it is unknowable – not only unknown. Then he comes to realize that there is no possibility to know. What does it mean? It means there is no possibility to be finished with it. It is going to be an eternal concern. You cannot be finished with it! You cannot say, “Now I will drop this religious inquiry, I can drop this religiousness. The thing is finished.” No, it cannot be finished.

People come to me and they go on asking, “When will it happen that the search ceases, that we reach, that the ultimate happens?” They are in such a hurry! It is not going to end anywhere, remember. It is not going to end. This quest is eternal. You will go on growing. You will go on growing into deeper awareness, into deeper bliss. But still, something always remains hidden, and you go on uncovering it. But it is never uncovered completely; it cannot be so. This is how the very nature of the ultimate reality is.

But teachers go on saying, “Do not worry. Sooner or later, you will reach.” I myself go on saying it. People come to me and they say, “We have been meditating for so long. When will it happen?” I say, “Wait! Soon it will happen.” But these are all lies. If I say that it is not going to happen ever, you will simply drop the whole effort; you will feel hopeless. So I will go on saying that it is going to happen.

It is happening already but it is not going to happen in such a way that the journey ends. And one day you yourself will become aware of the beauty of this non-ending process, and you will realize what an ugly question you were asking. You were asking how to end all this. The very question is ugly and absurd. You do not know but what you are asking is against yourself – because if it ends, you end with it. If there is no search, nothing to be revealed, nothing to be loved, nothing to be known, nothing to be entered, how can you be? If you were in such a state, you would want to commit suicide.

Bertrand Russell has somewhere joked. He said, “I cannot believe in the Hindu conception of liberation – of moksha – because,” he says, “in moksha, the Hindu conception of liberation, you will be freed of everything: nothing is to be done, nothing will happen. You will be sitting and sitting and sitting under bodhi trees, and nothing will happen because everything has ceased.” So Russell says, “That will be too much. It will become a burden, and the liberation will become a new type of bondage. Everyone will get fed up, and everyone will start praying: Send us back to the earth or even to hell. Even hell will be better because there will be something there to be done, there will be some news. But in moksha there will be no news, no events, no happenings. Just think: eternally no happenings, no movement – what type of moksha will this be?”

Really, when Hindus talk about this moksha, or Jainas talk about this moksha, it does not mean that such a moksha exists or such a state exists. This is just to help you, because you cannot conceive of the eternal process. So they say, “Yes, do not be worried. Sooner or later, everything will stop and then you will not have to do anything.” But you do not know what type of misery this will be. This will be more miserable than the earth is.

Moksha is not a static thing. It is a dynamic process. And moksha is not some geographical place. It is a way of looking at things, it is an attitude. If you can be alive moment to moment, you will never ask when all this is going to finish. The very question shows that you are not alive and you are not enjoying life as it is. If you enjoy life, you will not ask when it is going to end, you will not ask when you are going to be freed of it. Then you are already free. In the very enjoyment the freedom has come. Whether it ends or not is not a concern at all. If it ends it is good. If it doesn’t end it is also good. Then you accept it totally.

The sutra says:

To the man of true knowledge it is the unknown, while to the ignorant it is the known.

This seems contradictory. It is only ignorance which can claim such a thing. And the more stupid the mind, then the more arrogant will be the claim, the more dogmatic will be the claim.

But even that dogmatic claim may impress you. There are religious fanatics all over the world who go on claiming. And their claims impress people because just by their aggression, their dogmatism, their absolute definiteness, you are overpowered. You think this man must have achieved because he is claiming so boldly. You are so uncertain about yourself that anyone, any stupid man, can claim anything with certainty and you will be impressed. But remember this: only for ignorance does such certainty exist. A man who is wise cannot be dogmatically certain. He cannot assert anything absolutely; he cannot assert anything in an imperative way.

For example, Mahavira: if you ask him anything he will look very uncertain. He is not, but he is a wise man. If you ask him, “Is there God?” he will say, “Maybe, maybe not.” This is the mind that doesn’t claim – because if he says, “He is,” it becomes a claim; and if he says, “He is not,” it still becomes a claim. He says, “Maybe, perhaps.” Syad is his word – perhaps, maybe.

You will not be impressed by him. That is why such a great man was born and there are so few followers; Jainas are not more than thirty lakhs. Twenty-five centuries have passed. Even if one Adam and Eve were converted by Mahavira they would have created such a number. Only three million people in twenty-five centuries – and they too are Jainas only by birth, because to be a Jaina means to be in the attitude of perhaps, maybe.

Why does Mahavira go on saying maybe, whatsoever you ask? Even if you ask if there is a soul, he says, “Maybe, maybe not.” Why this insistence? Because he never claims knowledge and he allows everything to remain unknown – that is why the insistence on maybe because then things remain unknown, uncertain, vague, and you can inquire. When everything is certain, inquiry ceases. If he says, “Yes – there is a God, there is soul, there is bliss,” inquiry has stopped.

Now what can you do? Either you can follow him or not follow him but he says, “Maybe.” He leaves everything open. That is the meaning of syad: everything is open. He doesn’t force anything upon you. He doesn’t say yes dogmatically, he doesn’t say no, because his aggression may impress itself upon you. Just listening to him may become fatal to you. And Mahavira is such a person that you will be impressed, you will be magnetized just listening to him. If he says, “There is,” it may become a knowledge to you. You will go on believing that there is, and that will be destructive. To create knowledge is to be destructive.

But only those who are very sensitive can understand Mahavira. Those who are insensitive, ignorant, stupid, will think, “This man doesn’t know. Our village pundit is better. At least he says, ‘Yes, God is, and I can prove it. I can give you proofs from literature – from the Vedas, the Upanishads. I can argue that God is and I can convince you.’ And this man says, ‘Maybe.’ What does it mean? Has he known or not?” People go on asking Mahavira, “If you have known, then why not say yes? Or if you have come to know that there is no God, then why not say no? Be clear!”

Why do you ask for clarity? You ask for clarity so that you can follow blindly. You ask for clarity so that nothing is left for you to work out. You are lazy, so you ask for clarity. Mahavira will not give you clarity. Really, whenever you come across such a person as Mahavira he will create more confusion in you because out of confusion inquiry is born. Out of certainty comes only ignorance.

This sutra says that it – the ultimate – is the unknown to the wise, to those who know, while to the ignorant it is the known. Don’t be too certain. Remain uncertain. Uncertainty means fluidity; uncertainty means every alternative is possible. You are not a fixed entity. The future is not going to be just a repetition of the past. Something new is possible every moment. Remain vague. Do not insist on consistencies. Even if there is apparently a contradiction, do not try to choose in haste. Wait, weigh, and even in the contradiction try to find something which joins the two opposites. That third thing will be nearer to truth than any polarity.

The whole emphasis is to remain in a state of receptivity for the unknown to happen to you. Be sensitive, fluid, impressionable, as if some guest is to come and you are waiting. The door is open. Even the breeze passing through the trees or the breeze passing through the dead leaves . . . you jump to the door. The guest may have come; you are alert.

The guest has not come yet. You are simply waiting. In this alertness, one comes to know the ultimate core of reality. The guest never comes really. He is always coming; he is always coming – coming and coming and coming. He is always nearer and nearer and nearer, closer and closer, but he never really comes. You always remain in waiting. This waiting is beautiful. It is bliss – if you can wait. But then you need a very sensitive mind. Mediocre, stupid minds won’t be of any help there. A stupid mind will say, “Now come in; otherwise, I am going to close the door and rest. I have waited long.” […]

This is the whole situation. Really, he is always coming, his chariot is always near the door. He is knocking continuously but you are closed. Be open – that is the basic message of the Upanishads. Do not be knowledgeable. Do not cling to the past, to the history, to the memory. Be open and wait for the unknown to happen. And whenever it happens do not try to make it known. Whatsoever happens, throw it away and be ready again. Something new will happen again. The Brahman remains unknown continuously.

Indeed, he attains immortality who realizes it in and through every bodh – pulsation of knowledge and awareness.

No knowledge is ultimate. Every knowledge is just a pulsation – just a pulsation, a vibration. Do not make any vibration the ultimate. In deep meditation you will come to feel a great silence: this is just a pulsation. Do not think this is Brahman. Brahman is always more. Whatsoever happens, he is always more. Do not identify any happening with the Brahman; otherwise, you will stop.

In meditation, many times a deep bliss will happen to you; you will be washed away. But do not say this is the Brahman because the moment you say this is Brahman you are closed. It is just a pulsation of bodh, just a pulsation of knowing, just a pulsation of consciousness, but just a wave. Never make any wave the ocean. Remember, when you make a wave the ocean it has become knowledge; then you are closed. Let every wave be just a wave and wait for the ocean.

And remember, the ocean never comes; it is always the waves which are coming. The ocean comes through the waves, but it is always the waves which are coming. The ocean never comes. So do not fix yourself and do not say this wave is the ocean. The moment you say it you are closed.

Many people have reached deep ecstasies and then they stop because then they say, “This is Brahman; the ultimate has been achieved.” Remember, it is never achieved. It is simply achievable but never achieved; approachable but never approached.

The journey remains and it is beautiful that the journey remains. Whatsoever knowing comes to you, the Upanishads say that it is just a pulsation of knowledge and awareness. And if you can feel this pulsation of knowledge and awareness, you will attain immortality. Why? You become mortal, you become prone to death, because you cling to the dead – the dead past. If you do not cling to the past there is no death for you, it cannot happen. The body will disappear but that is not death. It becomes a death because you have become too much obsessed with the body – because you have lived in the body in the past.

One person has lived a hundred years in his body. In that hundred years’ experience of living in the body he has become obsessed with the body. Now he thinks that he is the body. These hundred years of routine, habit, has created this false notion that he is the body. That is why he feels that death is coming.

Children are less afraid of death than old men. Why? – because they are still new to the body. It has not become their experience and knowledge. They are fresh. Children can play with snakes without any fear. They can play with poison; they can move in any danger. They are not afraid. Why? – because they are still fresh to this new abode. They are not clinging to it too much. It has not yet become a past. But sooner or later, when they have lived in it for many years, they will cling to it. Then they will be afraid. Then they will become afraid of death because in death the body will die, and they have come to feel that they are the body.

A person who lives moment to moment, who goes on dying to the past, is never attached to anything. Attachment comes from the accumulated past. If you can be unattached to the past every moment, then you are always fresh, young, just born. You pulsate with life and that pulsation gives you immortality. You are immortal, only unaware of the fact.

Indeed, he attains immortality who realizes it in and through every bodh. Through the atman he obtains strength and vigor, and through its knowledge, immortality.

The more you know life, the inner life, the atman, then the more you know that you are immortal. There is not going to be any death: you are deathless.

For one who realizes it here, in this world, there is true life.

So do not hanker after any other life; do not hanker for something to happen after death. If it cannot happen here, it will not happen ever. If it can happen it can happen here and now. This earth, this life is the present. Do not condemn it for another life. There is no other life. Life is always here; life is always in this moment. Do not postpone it because through postponing you may miss the opportunity.

For one who realizes it here there is true life. For one who does not so realize it, great is the loss. Discovering the atman in every single being, the wise ones, dying to this world of sense experience, become immortal.

Go on dying to the past, and you will not have any world around you with which you are attached, obsessed. Dying to the past, you die to this world. Remember, this world is created through your experience; it is your experience. Dying to experience, you are so young that you do not create any world around you. The real world is not the problem – the world around your mind is the problem.

I have heard: once it happened that a house was on fire. The master of the house was weeping, crying, and beating his chest. His whole life was destroyed. Then suddenly a man came and said, “Why are you weeping? Don’t you know? Your son has settled yesterday; the house has been sold.”

The tears disappeared and the man even started smiling. He said, “Is it so?” The house was still burning but now his inner house was not burning. This house was not the problem, but an inner attachment.

Then the son came and said, “Yes, we were just going to settle but it is not settled yet.”

The man’s tears started flowing. He was weeping and beating his chest but the house was completely unaware of what was happening to this man. Within minutes everything changes – the inner world changes. If the house were not his, then he would not have any problem. The problem was not the house but that “the house is mine.” That ‘mine’ creates the inner world.

If you go on throwing the past away, then nothing is yours. Then nothing is your possession; you always remain without any possession. That is what sannyas is. Not that you will not use a house, not that you will not use clothes, not that you will not live in this world – but nothing will be your possession. The world of the inner mind disappears. Then the real world is beautiful. All ugliness is projected by your mind, by the dead past; then life becomes ugly.

With the living present, life is just beautiful and blissful.

-Osho

From The Supreme Doctrine, Discourse #10

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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This Witnessing Consciousness – Osho

When the self as consciousness, which is truth, knowledge, infinity, and bliss, devoid of all its attributes, shines like pure gold freed from all its forms such as a bangle and a crown, it is called twam or thou, The brahman is truth, infinity and knowledge. That which is destructible is truth. And that which does not perish even after the destruction of space, time, et cetera is called the avinashi, the imperishable.

-Sarvasar Upanishad

There is a dialogue, a deep dialogue between my existence and existence itself, a constant dialogue, a continuity every moment: the incoming breath, the outgoing breath. I am constantly linked with the universe, with existence.

If we take two points, between these two points the dialogue continues. One point is “I,” and the other point – the total – is “thou.”

A non-religious mind, a material mind, will say that the dialogue is not between “I” and “thou,” the dialogue is between “I” and “that,” because the world is just a thing; it is not a person. And really, if the world is just a thing and it is not a person, then there can be no dialogue, there can be no intimacy. But if the whole world is just a thing, then myself – I myself cannot be a person; this “I” is also a thing. This is what is meant by a materialist conception of the world.

Of course there are relations – stimulus-response relations – but no dialogue, no intimacy. You cannot address existence as “thou,” because there then is no poetry, and then there is no religion. Among things only science can exist; among persons religion grows.

The religious attitude towards existence is a personal attitude: the whole universe is taken as a person. The you can talk, then you can love, then you can be angry with the total; and your life becomes deeply rich, because life and richness develop only through deeper dialogues with the reality.

But still, even if a religious person thinks that the world is not just material, the world is personal, and existence has a personality – then too, “I” continues to be the center; “thou” is just the periphery, just the circumference. I remain at the center of the universe, and the whole universe just belongs to me as a periphery.

In this sutra, the rishi says that when the pure consciousness is known, when the witnessing consciousness is known, there is a mutation, a total change of emphasis. “Thou” becomes the center and “I” becomes the periphery. “Thou” becomes the center, and “I” just the periphery. This pure consciousness therefore is known as “thou – twama, tu. It is not known as “I” because now I exists only as a periphery. It is really non-existential because periphery, in fact, is non-existential. It is just a line, a demarcation line and nothing else. It belongs to the center; it is just a projection of the center, an extension of the center.

When pure consciousness is known, pure consciousness is known as “thou.” This has many implications. One, the moment we conceive pure consciousness as “thou,” the whole universe, the whole of existence becomes a very different thing than we know it now. If you address the tree as “thou,” the tree is not the same; it has become a person, and a new dimension opens – a new dimension. And when the tree has become thou, you also cannot remain the same, because with a new relationship, with a new dimension, you are also different.

But as we are, even a living person, even a human person, is not “thou” for us. We use the word, but not meaningfully. We behave with persons as if they are not persons. For example, you love someone and then you begin to possess him or possess her. A person can never be possessed; only a thing can be possessed. How can a person be possessed? And how can love be possessive? If love becomes possessive it means that you are transforming a person into a thing.

That’s why a beloved may be a person, but a wife becomes just a thing, just a thing to be used. Why this possession? Because we just go on saying “thou,” but we never mean it – we never mean it. If you are really saying “thou” to someone, it means you accept the other as a person and you cannot possess him. A person means a freedom; a person means: now you cannot be the master. So we turn even persons into things. But with this pure consciousness developing inside, things turn into persons, and the whole universe by and by takes a shape of “thou,” of a great “thou” – everything becomes a person.

We live among things, mm? Even if we are living among persons, we live among things. And the more you live among things, the more you will be a thing yourself – that’s bound to happen. So a person who tries to possess someone becomes himself a possession. The phenomenon is reciprocal – if I try to possess someone as my property, I am bound to become myself a thing, a property. So it is not that the husband possesses the wife; the wife also possesses the husband. They both are possessors and both are things.

The moment you begin to feel someone as a thing, you begin to expect. With a person there can be no expectation, because person means a freedom. You have loved me this evening, you have been loving towards me; if I expect that tomorrow also you must give me love, it means I am thinking of you as a thing. And if tomorrow you are not going to love me, then I will be angry, I will be frustrated, and I will take revenge. I will begin to feel that my possession is being lost. Why?

With a thing you can expect that it will behave the same tomorrow also – but not with a person. A person is a constant flux, the freedom to move. He may be something else tomorrow, who knows? He may be not love me at all. If I take you as a person, then I will never be frustrated with you, because the frustration comes when I take you as a thing.

But this pure consciousness begins to feel the whole universe as a “thou”; therefore this consciousness is never frustrated. Never! There is no reason to be frustrated at all. Whatsoever happens, happens. It is never against expectation, because there has been no expectation at all. If tomorrow the tree moves from my garden to somewhere else, even that will not frustrate me. I will just say, “Oh, so thou hast gone. So thou hast moved.”

The truth, the infinite truth, the eternal consciousness, the formless is known as “thou,” never as “I.” Then you begin to live in a world of freedom, of non-possession. And when you behave in a non-possessive way, the whole world begins to behave non-possessively towards you. The whole universe becomes non-possessive of you.

This is what is meant by freedom: if you give freedom to the whole universe, you become free. But this freedom happens only when “I” is not at the center, but “thou.” Really even “thou” is not exactly what the case is; even “thou” is a bit less than true, because “thou” cannot exist without a subtle feeling of “I.” I cannot address someone as “thou” without myself being there, even indirectly, even in a very absent ways – even unconsciously. But the “I” must be there to address someone as “thou.”

So this is just to express something in language which cannot be expressed. Really, when you are not in the center, not even the “thou” is the center. “I and thou” both dissolve into oneness. But that oneness is inexpressible, and still, the rishi tries to say something about it to the disciple, to the enquirer. So what to say? He says at least one thing is certain; it cannot be called “I,” it is called “thou.” And when the disciple is ready, the inexpressible can also be indicated. But in the beginning, it is more than enough. “I” is not in the center, that consciousness is impure. And “I” is in the center, so consciousness IS impure. That happens only when you know the formless. And if it is not happening and “I” is in the center, that means you are in the form, obsessed with the form, obsessed with the superficial. You have not gone deep; you have not gone to the innermost core of your being. You have just lived outside your house; you have not know it from the inside.

“I” in the center is symbolic, indicative that we have not known what we are. We have known only identities with the for. The body is form, the mind is form, thought is form – all that we know about ourselves is form. And these forms happen upon the ocean of the formless. With that formless coming into your awareness, the “I” becomes the periphery and “thou,” the center.

Now the definition of truth. What is truth? Everyone is seeking, and everyone is trying to find it out, but what is it? How to define it? The materialist mind defines truth as the fact; whatsoever is objectively true, objectively factual, is truth. And personal experience which cannot be objectified will not be considered as truth. So if Jesus says, “I see my father in heaven,” either he is a dreamer or just psychotic, neurotic, just mad – because no one else can see the father in heaven. So either he is just a poet, just an imaginary dreamer, or just mad, insane, abnormal . . . seeing things which are not.

This definition of truth as fact is dangerous in many ways. It is useful, it is utilitarian, it helps – particularly it helps the scientific research – but it is dangerous. Because even if there is no objective proof, even if all cannot see a particular thing, the thing can be. It is not necessarily that because all others are not seeing it, it is not there.

For example: there are colorblind people; out of ten one is colorblind. By being colorblind it is meant that he cannot see a particular color. For example, George Bernard Shaw was blind to yellow; he couldn’t make any distinction between yellow and green. But for sixty years continuously he was not aware of it, because how could he be aware? It was just an accident that he became aware.

On one of his birthdays, someone presented a suit of a green color, but he forgot to send a green tie with it. So Bernard Shaw went to purchase a green tie, but he purchased a yellow one, because there was no distinction for him between yellow and green. His secretary said, “What are you doing? This will look very funny. This is yellow and the suit is green.” For the first time after sixty years’ living in this colorful world, he became aware that he was colorblind. He could not see any distinction between yellow and green – both were the same.

If ten persons are colorblind just like Bernard Shaw, and you can see yellow and ten cannot see yellow, what will be the truth? You will be either neurotic or just a dreamer.

There are personal faculties which may not have developed as a communal thing – the community may be lacking. There are personal faculties . . . But this definition of truth as fact will deny them. So sometimes even very intelligent people, very logical rational people, go on being superstitious in denying things which are, but which cannot be shown objectively. The whole psychic phenomenon has suffered only because of this. There are people who have faculties, but only individuals. So either they are deceivers – either they are playing tricks, deceiving others – or they are just claiming things which are not real.

There is one man, Peter Herkos. He can see things from very, very far off. Three hundred miles distance makes no difference to him. From here he can see three hundred miles away, a village on fire. No one would believe him, no one; but by and by, people became aware that yes, he was seeing things, and things proved objectively true. There was a fire and someone died. He said from just here that someone had died in that village, and that very moment someone had died; but still scientists tried to disprove it. They thought somehow that he was maneuvering things – someone might have telephoned, some signal, something… something was there which they did not know about. But many, many experiments were carried out, and still no deception was found. And the thing became more amazing because Herkos himself was a skeptic; he himself did not believe that such things could happen. How could they happen? So he said, “If this would have been the case with someone else, I myself would say that he is deceiving. But how can I say it now? I am not deceiving at all – I go on seeing things.” But they are personal . . .

A buddha experiencing what he called nirvana – it is a personal experience. It is not a fact, but it is a truth. So it is not necessarily that truth should be a fact, and not vice versa also that a fact is bound to be a truth.

The rishi defines truth more deeply, more absolutely. He says truth means that which is always unchanging, which is always. If a fact changes, it is also not a truth. And if a dream remains continuously, eternally, it is true; it is truth. So by truth, the Upanishads mean: the absolutely eternal.

What is absolutely eternal in this world of movement and change? Only change seems to be eternal and nothing else. Everything changes except change. And change cannot be called the eternal truth, because the very definition is “the unchanging one,” and change means “changing one.” Where is the eternal? – we never see it, we never feel it, we never know it – nowhere; everywhere is form and movement and change, and everything is impermanence itself.

Buddha says, “Everything is impermanent, everything – even you yourself – just impermanent. Nothing is permanent here.” So is there any truth, or not? Only one thing seems to be deeply eternal: the see-er, and nothing else – the witnessing soul, nothing else. Buddha says, “Nothing is permanent.” But who has seen this? This “nothing is permanent” – who has seen this? Someone must have seen this impermanency. Someone must have felt this constant flux, change. And to feel the change, this constant change, to be aware of it, at least the awareness must be eternal. So that’s why truth and the inner consciousness become synonymous.

For a philosophically minded person the enquiry into truth becomes a logical enquiry – metaphysical, philosophical. He goes on finding what is truth, logically, rationally. He may create a philosophy but he is not going to find the truth. For a religious mind, the enquiry begins to be a search for the eternal. And when a religious man says, “I am seeking the truth,” he means “I am seeking that which is always, that which is eternal – the eternity itself.” Time ceases, space ceases, everything is dissolved, but that which is remains still.

This witnessing consciousness . . . You are ill, then you are healthy; you are rich, then you are poor; you are respected, and then you are condemned; you are in hell, and you are in heaven – everything is changing. Only one who goes on knowing, “Now I am in hell, now I am in heaven; now they are respecting me, now they are condemning me; now I am ill, now I am healthy; now I am this, now I am that” – only one, and all else goes on moving, moving, moving. But this movement is known, and the knower is immovable, because only an unmoving knower can know movements. Only an immovable knower can know movements. Only the eternal one can know change. If the inner one is also changing, then change cannot be felt. You know that once you were a child, now you are not. If the inner consciousness itself has changed, who will remember that you were a child? If you have completely changed, then there will be no continuity. Who will remember that once you were a child and now you are not? Something behind all change remains the same. That something remembers, “I was once a child, now I am young, now I am going to be old, now I am going to die.”

This continuity, this consciousness, for the rishi of the Upanishads, is the truth. This truth is eternal, infinite, and the nature of it is just knowing, pure knowing. It is not love, it is not bliss; it is pure knowing, because even love has to be known, even bliss has to be known. So ultimately, love and bliss and all else become objects of knowledge. This remains to be always the knower, always the transcending knower, the transcendental one.

-Osho

From That Art Thou, Discourse #11

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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Transcending the Basic Duality of Sex – Osho

At whose desire and by whom impelled does the mind alight on its objects? By whom impelled does the chief prana – vital force – proceed to its function? By whom impelled do men utter this speech? What deva or god directs the eyes and the ears?

It – the atman – is the ear of the ear, the mind of the mind, the speech of the speech, the prana of the prana, and the eye of the eye. Wise men separating the atman from these – sense functions – rise out of sense life and attain to immortality.

-Kenopanishad

Life is not there at its maximum when you are born; it is at its minimum. If you do stick at that, you will have a life which is just near death – just a borderline life. By birth, only an opportunity is given, only an opening is made.

Life has to be achieved. Birth is just a beginning, not the end. But normally we stay at the point of birth. That is why death happens. If you stay at the point of birth, you will die. If you can grow beyond birth, you can grow beyond death. Remember this very deeply: death is not against life; death is against birth. Life is something else. In death only birth ends and in birth only death begins. Life is something totally different. You have to attain it, achieve it, actualize it. It is given to you as a seed, just as a potentiality – something which can be, but which is not already there.

You have every chance of missing it. You can be alive because you are born, but that is not synonymous with really being in life. Life is your effort to actualize the potentiality. Hence, the meaning of religion, otherwise, there is no meaning in religion. If life begins with birth and ends in death, then there is no meaning for religion. Then religion is futile, nonsense. If life does not begin with birth, then religion has some meaning. Then it becomes the science of how to evolve life out of birth. And the more you move away from birth in life, the more you move away from death also because death and birth are parallel, similar, the same – two ends of one process. If you move away from the one, you are simultaneously moving away from the other.

Religion is a science to achieve life. Life is beyond death. Birth dies, life, never. To achieve this life, you have to do something. Birth is given to you. Your parents have done something: they have loved each other, they have been melting into each other, and out of their life force, melting into each other, a new phenomenon, a new seed – you – is born. But you have not done anything for it: it is a gift. Remember, birth is a gift. That is why all the cultures pay so much respect to parents – it is a gift, and you cannot repay it. The debt cannot be repaid. What can you do to repay it? Life has been given to you, but you have not done anything for it.

Religion can give you a new birth, a rebirth. You can be reborn. But this birth will happen through some alchemical change within you. Just as the first birth happened through two life forces meeting without you – they created an opportunity for you to enter, to be born; that is a deep alchemy – so a similar thing has to be done now within you. Your parents met – your mother and your father. Two forces, feminine and masculine, were meeting to create an opportunity for some new thing to be born. Two opposite forces were meeting, two polarities were meeting. And whenever two polarities meet, something new is born, a new synthesis is achieved. A similar thing has to happen within you.

You also have two polarities within you, the feminine and the masculine. Let me explain it a little more in detail . . . Because your body is born out of two polarities: cells from your mother and cells from your father, they create your body. You have both types of cells – those which came from your mother and those which came from your father. Your body consists of two polarities, feminine and masculine. You are both, everyone is both. Whether you are man or woman it makes no difference. If you are a man, you have a woman within you: your mother is there. If you are a woman, you have a man within you: your father is there. They can again meet within you. And the whole yoga, the whole tantra, the alchemy, the whole process of religion, is how to create an orgasm, a deep intercourse between the polarities within you. And when they meet within you a new type of being is born, a new life becomes alive.

If you are a man, then your conscious is masculine, and your unconscious is feminine. If you are a woman your conscious is feminine, and your unconscious is masculine. Your conscious and unconscious must meet so that a new birth becomes possible. What to do for their meeting to happen? Bring them nearer. You have created a separation; you have created all types of barriers. You do not allow them to meet. You try to exist with the conscious and you go on suppressing the unconscious. You do not allow it.

If a man starts weeping and crying, someone is bound to say immediately, “What are you doing? You are doing something womanish, feminine.” The man stops immediately. The masculine is not expected to weep and cry. But you have the possibility; the unconscious is there. You have moments of feminineness; you have moments of masculineness; everyone does.

A woman can become ferocious, a male, in some moods, in some moments. But then she will suppress. She will say, “This is not womanlike.” We go on creating a separation, a distance. That distance has to be thrown away; your conscious and unconscious must come nearer. Only then can they meet, only then can they have a deep intercourse. An orgasm can happen within you. That orgasm is known as spiritual bliss.

One type of orgasm is possible between your body and the body of the polar opposite sex; it can happen only for a single moment because you meet only on the periphery. The peripheries meet and then they separate. Another type, a deeper type of orgasm, can happen within. But then you meet at the center and there is no need to separate again. Sexual ecstasy can only be momentary; spiritual ecstasy can be eternal. Once attained you need not lose it. Really, once attained it is difficult to lose it – impossible to lose it. It becomes such an integration that the fragments disappear completely.

That is why when someone asked Buddha, “Who are you? A deva, a heavenly being?” he said, “No!” And the questioner went on asking. Then the questioner became desperate because whenever he asked Buddha who he is, if he is this or that, Buddha went on saying, “No!” Then finally he asked, “At least you must say that you are male. You must say yes.” Buddha said, “No!” “Then are you a female?” the man asked desperately. Buddha said, “No!” – because a new unity has come into being which is neither male nor female.

When your inner man and inner woman meet, you are neither: you transcend sex. That is the meaning of the oldest Indian image of Shiva as Ardhanarishwar – half man, half woman. That is the symbol of the inner meeting. Shiva is neither now: he is half man, half woman – both and neither. He transcends sex.

Remember, unless you transcend sex, you cannot transcend duality. This is a deep psychological problem – not only psychological but ontological also. If you remain a man or a woman, how can you conceive of the oneness of existence? You cannot. Being a man, you cannot conceive of yourself being one with a woman. Being a woman, you cannot conceive of yourself being one with a man. A duality persists.

Sex is the basic duality. We have been arguing about and discussing for centuries how to attain the nondual. But we go on discussing it as if it is some intellectual matter: “How to attain the nondual?” It is not an intellectual matter; it is ontological, existential. You can attain the nondual only when the duality within you disappears. It is not a question of meditating on the nondual and thinking, “I am the Brahman.” Nothing will come out of it; you are simply deluding yourself.

You cannot attain nonduality unless the basic duality of sex disappears within you, unless you come to a moment when you cannot say who you are – man or woman. And this happens only when your inner man and woman melt so much that they dissolve into each other – and all the boundaries are lost, and all the distinctions are lost, and they are one. When the inner orgasm, the spiritual ecstasy happens, you are neither. And only when you are neither is life born.

In a single moment of meeting between your parents, your mother and father, you were born – in a single moment of meeting! Remember, life is always out of meeting, never out of separation. Life comes only in a deep meeting, in a deep communion. For a single moment your father and mother were one, they were not two. They were functioning as one being. In that oneness you were born.

Life always comes out of oneness. And the life that I am talking about, or Jesus talks about, and Buddha talks about, is the life which will happen inside you, within you. Again, a communion, a melting, happens, and the two sexualities within you dissolve.

Remember, I say again and again that sex is the basic duality, and unless you transcend sex the Brahman cannot be achieved. All other dualities are just reflections and reflections of this basic duality. Birth and death – again a duality. They will disappear when you are neither male nor female. When you have a consciousness which goes beyond both, birth and death disappear, matter and mind disappear, this world and that world disappear, heaven and hell disappear. All dualities disappear when the basic duality within you disappears, because all dualities are simply echoing and re-echoing the basic division within you.

That is why the old, ancient Indian seers have put the Brahman in the third category. He is neither male nor female. They call him napunsak – impotent. They call him the third sex, the ultimate reality of the third sex. The word brahman belongs to napunsak ling: it is neither or it is both. But one thing is certain: it transcends the duality. That is why other conceptions of God look immature, childish. Christians call him father. This is childish, because then where is the mother? And how is this son Jesus born? And they say Jesus is the only son but where is the mother? The father alone giving birth? If the father alone gives birth to Jesus, then he is both – mother and father. Then do not call him father. Then the duality comes in.

Or some religions have called the ultimate being the mother. Then where is the father? These are just anthropomorphic feelings. Man cannot even think about the ultimate in any other terms than human, so he calls it father or mother. But those who have known and those who have transcended the anthropocentric attitude, the man-oriented attitude – they know that he is neither. He transcends both; he is a meeting of both.

In the ultimate, mother and father both are merged. Or, if you will allow me the expression, I would like to say: the Brahman is mother and father in eternal orgasm – one in an eternal ecstasy of meeting. And out of that meeting comes the whole creation, out of that meeting comes the whole play, out of that meeting all that exists is born.

Here, in this meditation camp, we will be trying to bring your unconscious and conscious nearer, your feminine and your masculine nearer. You will have to help me, to cooperate with me. In the meditation techniques you have to destroy all the barriers between your conscious mind and the unconscious. And you have to be free, as totally free as possible because suppression has created the barriers. [. . .]

Here we will try to bring the authentic religion. The secret most core of it is that you must come to it totally – with your mind, your body, your emotions, everything. Nothing is denied. You cry and you weep, and you laugh and you dance, and you sit in silence. You do all the things that your inner being happens to do; you do not force it to do anything. You do not say, “This is not good; I should not do it.” You allow a spontaneous flow. Then the unconscious will come nearer and nearer to the conscious.

We have created the gap through suppression: “Don’t do this, don’t do that,” and we go on suppressing. Then the unconscious is suppressed. It becomes dark. It becomes a part where we never move in our own house. Then we are divided. And remember, then there are perversions.

If you allow your unconscious to come nearer to your conscious, too much sex-obsession will disappear. If you are a man and you deny your unconscious, you are denying your inner woman; then you will be attracted to outer women too much. It will become a perversion because then it is a substitute. The inner femininity has been denied; now the outer femininity becomes obsessive to you. You will think and think about it; now your whole mind will become sexual. If you are a woman and you have denied the man, then ‘man’ will take possession of you. Then whatsoever you do or think, the basic color will remain sexual.

So much fantasy about sex is because you have denied your inner other. So now this is a compensation. Now you are compensating for something which you have denied to yourself. And look at the absurdity: the more you get obsessed with the other sex the more you feel afraid; the more you deny the inner the more you suppress it; and the more you suppress it the more you become obsessed.

Your so-called brahmacharis are totally obsessed with sex for twenty-four hours a day; they are bound to be. It is natural: nature takes revenge. To me, brahmacharya – celibacy – means you have come so near to your own feminine or your own masculine, so near that there is no substitution for it. You are not obsessed with it; you do not think about it. It disappears.

When your own unconscious is nearer to you, you need not substitute it with someone else outside. And then a miracle happens. If your unconscious is so near, then whenever you love someone, a woman or a man, that love is not pathological. If your unconscious is so near, that love is not pathological. It is not possessive; it is not mad. It is very silent, tranquil, calm, cool. Then the other is not a substitute, and you are not dependent on the other. Rather, the other becomes just a mirror.

Remember the difference: the other is not now a substitute, something which you have denied. The other becomes a mirror of your inner part, of your unconscious. Your wife, your beloved, becomes just a mirror. In that mirror you see your unconscious. Your lover, your husband, your friend, becomes a mirror. And in that mirror, you can see your unconscious clearly mirrored, projected outside. Then wife and husband can help each other to bring their unconscious more and more near.

And a moment comes, and it must come if life has been a really successful effort, when wife and husband are no more wife and husband: they have become companions on the eternal journey. They help each other; they have become mirrors to each other. They reveal the unconscious of the other and each helps the other to know himself or herself. Now there is no pathology, no dependence.

Remember one thing more: if you deny your unconscious, if you hate your unconscious, if you suppress your woman or man within, then you can go on saying that you love the outer woman but deep down you will hate her also. If you deny your own woman, you will hate the woman you love. If you deny your own man, you will hate the man you love. Your love will just be on the surface. Deep down it will be a hatred. It is bound to be so, it has to be so, because you will not allow the other to become the mirror of your unconscious. And you will be afraid also. Man is afraid of woman. Go and ask your so-called saints. They are so afraid of women. Why? They are afraid of the unconscious, and the woman becomes a mirror. Whatsoever they have hidden, she reveals.

If you have suppressed something, then the other polar opposite can reveal it immediately. If you have been suppressing sex and you are sitting in meditation in a lonely place and a beautiful woman passes by, suddenly your unconscious will assert itself. That which has been hidden will be revealed in the woman passing and you will be against that woman. You are foolish – because that woman is not doing anything at all, she is just passing there. She may not even know that you are there; she is not doing anything to you. She is a mirror, but the mirror is passing, and in that mirror, your unconscious is reflected.

The whole so-called spirituality is based on fear. What is the fear? The fear is that the other can reveal the unconscious and you do not want to know anything about it. But not knowing will not help, suppression will not help. It will remain there. It will become a cancer and by and by it will assert itself more and more, and ultimately you will come to feel that you have been a failure and that whatsoever you have suppressed has become victorious and you are defeated.

My whole effort is to bring your unconscious nearer to your conscious. You become so much acquainted with it so that it is not unknown. You become friendly to it, then the fear disappears – the fear of the polar opposite. And then the hatred also disappears because then the other is just a mirror, helpful. You feel gratitude. Lovers will be grateful to each other if the unconscious is not suppressed, and they will be hateful to each other if the unconscious is suppressed.

Allow your whole being to come into function. Your emotions are imprisoned, encapsulated. Your body movements are imprisoned. Your body, your heart, have become just as if they are not part of you. You simply carry them along like a burden. Allow your emotions full play. In the meditations we will be doing, allow your emotions full play and enjoy the play, because many new things will be revealed to you.

You have not been screaming. You have not screamed; you cannot remember when you last screamed. When the scream comes to you and takes possession of you, you will become afraid of what is happening because then you are losing control. But lose control: your control is the poison. Lose control completely. Allow your emotions to erupt like a volcano. You will be surprised at what is hidden in you. You may not even be able to recognize that it is your face.

Allow your body to have full play also, so that every cell of the body becomes vibrant, alive. Just as a bird alights on a branch and the branch starts wavering – becomes vibrant, alive – let your being alight on your body and allow your body to be vibrant, alive, alive with the inner force. And suddenly you will enter a new door unknown before. You will open a new dimension of your own existence and that dimension will lead you to the ultimate, to the divine.

Now the sutra:

At whose desire and by whom impelled does the mind alight on its objects? By whom impelled does the chief prana – vital force – proceed to its function? By whom impelled do men utter this speech? What deva or god directs the eyes and the ears?

The master is asking what is the original source in you – of your entire life, of all your movements, of all your expressions. What force creates desire? What force impels you to be alive? What force gives you the lust for life? There must be a hidden force, in a way inexhaustible: it goes on and on; it never tires.

At whose desire by whom impelled does the mind alight on its objects?

When you look at a beautiful woman or a beautiful flower or a beautiful sunset, who impels you? Who throws you outward? Who is the inner source of all your activity?

The Upanishads say that whatsoever you do, the doer is always the Brahman – whatsoever you do, you are not the doer. The doer is always the Brahman. If you run after a woman filled with lust the Upanishads say it is also the Brahman. Because of this, Christian missionaries could never understand what type of religion Hinduism is. Even lust is spiritual because the original source is always the Brahman. Whatsoever you do with your energy, he is moving in it.

There is a story . . . The god Brahma created the world and he fell in love with it. Christian theologians cannot understand it. Naturally, it is difficult to understand. Brahma goes on creating other beings and he goes on falling in love with them! He creates a cow, and he falls in love and becomes the bull – and on and on, until the whole creation is created. He creates the cow, and he becomes the bull. He goes on dividing himself into two polar opposites. The story is just beautiful, if you can understand it. He goes on dividing himself into two polar opposites. And remember, the reverse is the process to reach him again. Go on nondividing; go on meeting with the polar opposite. He creates the world through polar opposites. He creates the cow, but he is the cow because he creates the cow out of himself. Then he creates the bull, but he is the bull. He is both the feminine and the masculine.

Then he follows the cow, and the cow tries to escape the bull. The cow tries to hide and through her hiding she invites the bull. This is a hide-and-seek. That is why Hindus say the whole creation is just a play – a play of the same energy dividing itself into polar opposites and then playing hide-and-seek.

You are the Brahman. Your husband is the Brahman; your wife is the Brahman. And the Brahman is playing hide-and-seek. The whole idea is simply superb. The reverse is the process to reach the ultimate again: do not play hide-and-seek. Allow the divided parts to mingle into each other. Let them merge, and the Brahman arises again – the one.

This master asks:

At whose desire and by whom impelled does the mind alight on its objects? By whom impelled does the chief prana – vital force – proceed to its function? – who breathes in you? By whom impelled do men utter this speech? – who speaks in you? What deva or god directs the eyes and ears? – who is directing your senses?

The Upanishads are not against the senses. They are spiritually sensuous; they do not deny. Denial is not their slogan at all, denial is not their attitude. They accept and they say that even in the senses the divine is moving because there is nothing else to move. They make everything sacred; they make everything holy. They do not condemn; they do not say this is sin. Sin is unknown to the Upanishads, absolutely unknown. They say there is no sin – that everything is a play. Even in sin, even in the sinner, the same energy is moving.

Everything becomes holy. And if you can say with your full heart that everything is holy, holy, holy, you will become holy immediately because the very feeling that everything is holy and sacred makes the sin disappear. Sin is created by condemnation and the more you condemn, the more sinners you create.

The whole world has become a great crowd of sinners because everything has been condemned – everything! There is not a single thing which you can do which has not been condemned by someone or other. With everything condemned, you become a sinner. Then guilt arises – and when there is guilt you can pray but the prayer is poisonous; it comes out of your guilt. When you are guilty you can pray but that prayer is based on fear. That prayer is not love; it cannot be. Through guilt love is impossible. Feeling yourself condemned, a sinner, how can you love?

The Upanishads say that everything is holy because he is the source of all. Whether or not the river looks dirty to you is irrelevant. He is the source of all – the dirty river and the sacred Ganges, to both he gives the energy. To the sinner to the saint, he gives the energy. Really, there is no story like this, but I would like a story like this: he created the sinner, then he became the saint, just like the cow and the bull, and then the hide-and-seek. He created the saint and then he became the sinner and then the hide-and-seek . . . .

Have total acceptance of whatsoever exists. Just by being in existence, it is holy.

It – the atman, or the Brahman – is the ear of the ear, the mind of the mind, the speech of the speech, the prana of the prana, and the eye of the eye. Wise men separating the atman from these – sense functions – rise out of sense life and attain to immortality.

Whatsoever you do it is him – it is the functioning of him, of the total. The total functions in you. When you breathe, what do you do? You do nothing. The breathing comes in and goes out. Rather, he breathes in you; you cannot do anything. If the breath leaves you, what will you do? If it doesn’t come back, what will you do? If it has left then it has left and if it does not come back, you cannot do anything. Really, when it is not coming you are no more. Who is there to do anything? He breathes, not you. The emphasis is on the total, not on the individual.

This has to be constantly remembered, because we go on forgetting this. Our emphasis is on the individual, the I: “I am breathing, I am alive, I am seeing you.” No! The master says he – the Brahman – is seeing through the eyes, he is the eye of the eye. When I speak, I am not speaking: he speaks. And when you listen, you are not listening: he listens. He becomes the cow, he becomes the bull; he becomes the speaker, he becomes the listener. It is a mysterious hide-and-seek, a great play, a great drama, beautiful, if you can understand. He is everywhere – in the listener, in the speaker, he is everywhere! And when you are silent, he is silent within you. When you speak, he is speaking in you.

This emphasis is not only metaphysical, not only a doctrine. As a doctrine also it is superb. But it is to help you toward a new realization. While speaking, if you can feel he is speaking, all the fever in it will be lost. While fighting, if you can remember that he is fighting through you, the fight will become a drama. While being silent, feel he is silent within you. And if the silence is disturbed and thoughts start moving, you know that he is disturbed, not you. He has become the thoughts and now he is moving like clouds in your inner sky. He is both, so why be worried? He is both!

When you are healthy, he is healthy in you and when you are ill he is ill in you. You are totally unworried; you need not come in. Your whole burden has been thrown upon him. That is why I say this is not only metaphysical. It is one of the deepest techniques to transform your total being.

If he is doing everything, then why do you go on carrying yourself unnecessarily? He breathes and he is born, and he dies. When you die, he will die – not you. Then why be afraid of death? You become unconcerned. This unconcern relieves you of all burden. And this is the actual fact; this is not a make-believe. This is the actual fact: whatsoever is happening is happening to the total. The individual is just an illusion.

I have never been as an ego and I am not as an ego, and I cannot be; only he is. And when I say he, I mean the total. Do not try to conceive of him as a person. He is not a person; he is the total – the whole. That which breathes in you breathes in the trees and that which sings in you sings in the birds and that which dances in you dances in the rivers, in the brooks, in the springs, and that which speaks in you speaks in the breeze passing through the trees. The total!

Just change the gestalt, just change the pattern. Do not emphasize the individual; move to the total. Then what is the problem? Then there is no problem. With you enters every type of problem; with you enters anguish and anxiety. Without any burden on you, you are liberated. You can become a mukta, a liberated one, you can become a siddha, this very moment. Just by realizing, feeling that “I am not, and he is,” the past disappears, and the future is no more because the future is created out of your worries, imagination, projections. Then he will take care. Then whatsoever happens will happen and whatsoever happens will be good because it is out of him.

This is what trust is. It is not that you believe in a God sitting upon some throne in heaven and guiding everyone from there, a great controller, an engineer or something like that – no! He is not the managing director. He is not! There is neither any throne nor someone sitting on it. And faith doesn’t mean that you believe in a concept, in a philosophy. Faith means trust – trusting the whole. Then everything is blissful. How can anything else be? How can anything other than bliss be? You create misery because you come in. Go out just as if a lamp has been put out. Go out . . . and then he is.

It is the ear of the ear, the mind of the mind, the speech of the speech, the prana of the prana, and the eye of the eye.

Whatsoever appears on the surface, whatsoever it is, makes no difference. Always, hidden, he is there. Look at me with full remembrance, with mindfulness that he is looking through you, and immediately the quality of consciousness changes. Just now look at me: he is looking, he is the eye of the eye, and immediately you are not there, and a tremendous silence happens. The very quality of your being is different when you look at me as if he is looking and not you.

You are listening to me: forget that I am here; he is here – the total. The total has taken possession of me, the total has become active in me, the total has changed me into his instrument. Look at me as if he is speaking, listen to me as if he is speaking, and then everything is different. You are no more there . . . a sudden flash and everything changes. It is not a question of time. You are not to practice it; you can see it this very moment.

Look at me! You are not there; the total, the whole, has become the eyes; the whole has become the eyes in you. You are just an expression of the will of the whole, of the desire of the whole. The whole has become words through me, he is manipulating me, he is using me. And then, in this room, only he is. Then the totality becomes one. Then the parts are lost, and the fragments are no more and there is a deep orgasm between the speaker and listener. Then you will feel the presence, but the presence can come only if you forget yourself.

Remembering God is not really a remembering of his name. Remembering God is not to go on chanting “Rama, Rama, Krishna, Krishna”; that is useless, futile. Remembering him means forgetfulness of yourself. If you are not, if you are forgotten, completely forgetful of yourself, abandoned, he is. When you are not, suddenly he is – and this can happen in a single moment.

I am reminded that after the second world war it happened in a small village in England that there was a statue of Jesus just on the crossroads – a beautiful statue with raised hands. And on the statue, there was a plate, and on that plate, it was written: Come unto me.

In the second world war the statue was destroyed; a bomb fell upon it. And when there was restoration work and the village was again coming to be alive after the war, they remembered the statue, so they tried to find fragments of it. In the ruins the fragments were found, and the statue was restored again. But the hands could not be found. They were missing.

So the village council decided to ask the artist to make new hands. But one old man in the village who was always seen sitting near the statue – both when it was there and when it was not – said, “No! Let Jesus be without hands.”

The council said, “Then what will we do about the plate underneath? It is written, ‘Come unto me!’ and it had raised hands.”

The old man said, “Change the plate and write there, ‘Come unto me. I have no other hands than your own.’”

And now the statue stands there without the hands, and written underneath is: Come unto me. I have no other hands than yours.

In your hands he is moving, in your eyes he is moving, and in your heart, he is beating – the total. And he has no other hands, remember. He has no other eyes; he has no other heart to beat. He is beating all over, he is alive all over. This is the message.

It is the ear of the ear, the mind of the mind, the speech of the speech, the prana of the prana, and the eye of the eye. Wise men separating the atman from these – sense functions – rise out of sense life and attain to immortality.

All these senses are the functions, and he is the functionary within. Knowing this, you are not against the senses. Knowing this, you simply change the emphasis. Then you are not obsessed with the senses; you are always looking for the inner core. And the rishis say that by knowing this transcendence they attain immortality. Remember, only you can die; life never dies. Because you are born, you will die; that is the natural end to every birth. Life goes on . . . eternally moving; life never dies. Waves in it are born and they die, and the riverlike life moves and moves and moves.

Once you come to feel the river within your wave, you are immortal. If you can realize him seeing through you, breathing through you, you are immortal. Only this shell, this vehicle of the body, will disappear. You will never disappear. You cannot disappear – you have always been.

Sometimes you were a tree because the tree was the vehicle – because he willed to be a tree through you. Sometimes you were a cow because he willed himself to be a cow through you. Sometimes you were a butterfly, sometimes a flower, sometimes a rock . . . but you have always been here. You have always been here! You are not a new visitor. No one is a new visitor; no one is a stranger. You have always been here and now but with different vehicles. Sometimes a rock was the vehicle; now you are a man or a woman: now this is a vehicle.

If you can understand and know that the vehicle is just the vehicle, the vehicle can be changed. It will have to be changed. But the inner one who goes on changing faces remains the same. That one is immortal, life is immortal. You are mortal. And why are you mortal? – because you become identified with the vehicle. Moving in a cart you become the cart. Riding on the train you become the train. Flying in an aircraft you become the aircraft. You go on forgetting that the aircraft, the cart, the train, the car, they are vehicles.

You are not the vehicles; you are the total, and the total goes on changing its vehicles. Then you are immortal. Remember, you cannot be immortal if you are identified with the body. You are immortal knowing, transcending the body. The consciousness is immortal, the very aliveness is immortal.

The sutra says:

Wise men, transcending these – sense functions – rise out of sense life and attain immortality.

And the more you feel the inner, the essential, the eternal, the immortal, the less and less you are obsessed with the sense life. You can play it, but you are not obsessed. Krishna playing on his flute is not obsessed with the flute; Krishna dancing with his girlfriends, the gopis, is not obsessed. It is just a play. Life becomes a play, not an obsession, when you know the immortal.

-Osho

From The Supreme Doctrine, Discourse #2

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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Realization is a Deep Communion – Osho

Sarva niramaya paripoornohamasmiti mumukshunam mokshaik siddhirbhawati.

I am that absolutely pure brahman: to realize this is the attainment of liberation.

Existence is divided into two. Existence, as we see it, is a duality. Biologically, man is divided into two: man and woman. Ontologically, Existence is divided into mind and matter. The Chinese have called this “yin and yang.” The duality penetrates every realm of Existence. We can say that sex penetrates every layer of Existence. The duality is always present.

This duality also penetrates into mind itself. There are two types of mind, two types of mentality – masculine and feminine. You can give other names also, Western and Eastern, or, more particularly, you can call it Greek and Hindu. In a more abstract way, the division can be called philosophical and religious.

The first thing to be discussed today is the differences between the Greek mind and the Hindu mind. The Upanishads are the peak of the Hindu mind – of the Eastern mentality or the religious way of looking at Existence. It will be easy to understand the Hindu mind in contrast to the Greek mind, and these are the basic minds.

When I say, “Greek mind,” what do I mean? The Greek mind is one aspect of the duality of minds. The Greek mind thinks, speculates; the approach is intellectual, verbal, logical. The Hindu mind is quite the contrary. It doesn’t believe in thinking, it believes in experiencing. It doesn’t believe in logic, it believes in an irrational jump into Being itself. The Greek mind speculates as an outsider standing outside – as an observer, an onlooker. The Greek mind is not involved. The Greek mind says that if you are involved in something, you cannot think scientifically. Your observation cannot be just: it becomes prejudiced. So one must be an observer when one is thinking.

The Hindu mind says you cannot think at all when you are standing outside. Whatsoever you think, whatsoever you try to think, will be just about the periphery: you can not to know anything about the center. You are standing outside. Penetrate in! So much penetration is needed to know that ultimately you become one with the center. Only then do you know rightly; otherwise, everything is just acquaintance, not knowledge.

The Greek mind analyzes: analysis is the instrument for it to know anything. The Hindu mind synthesizes. Analysis is not the method – not to divide into parts, but to look for the whole in every part. The Hindu mind is always looking for the whole in the part. The Greek mind, in Democritus, comes to atoms, because if you go on analyzing, then the atom becomes the reality – the last particle which cannot be divided. The Hindu mind reaches to Brahman – to the Absolute. If you go on synthesizing, then ultimately the Absolute, the Whole, is reached. If you go on dividing, then the last particle – the last divisible particle – is the atom. If you go on adding, then there is the Brahman, the Ultimate, the Absolute.

The Greek mind could develop to be a scientific mind because analysis helps. The Hindu mind could never develop to be a scientific mind because synthesis can never lead to any science. It can lead to religion but not to science. The Western mind is the development of the Greek seed. So logic, conceptualization, thinking, rational analysis, they are the foundations for the West. Experience, not thinking, is the foundation for the Indian mind. So I would like to say that the Hindu mind is basically non-philosophical – not only non-philosophical, but, really, anti-philosophical. It doesn’t believe in philosophizing: it believes in experiencing.

You can think about love, you can analyze the phenomenon, you can create a hypothesis to explain it, you can create a system about it. In order to do this, it is not necessary to be in love yourself. You can be an outsider, you can go on observing love, and then you can create a system, a philosophy, about love. The Greeks say that if you yourself are in love, then your mind will be muddled. You will not be able to think. Then you will not be able to be impartial. Then your personality will enter into your theory and that will be destructive to it.

So you must be as if you are not. You must be out of it completely, totally. Do not become involved. To know about love, it is not necessary to be in love. Observe the facts, collect the data, experiment on others. You must always remain outside; then your observation will be factual. If you yourself are in love, then your observation will not be factual. Then you are involved, you are part of it, you are prejudiced.

But the Hindu mind says that unless you are in love, how can you know love? You can observe others love, but what are you observing? Just the behavior of two persons who are in love. You are not observing love – just the behavior of two persons who are in love. They may be just acting. You cannot know whether they are acting or really in love. They may be hiding their real hearts. You can see their faces, you can listen to their words, you can look at their acts, but how can you penetrate into their hearts? And if you are not capable of penetrating into their hearts, how can you know love?

Sometimes love is absolutely silent and sometimes the deception of love is very much vocal. So you can observe thousands and thousands of lovers, but still you cannot penetrate into the very phenomenon of love unless you are in love.

So the Hindu mind says that experience is the only way, not thinking. Thinking is verbal; you can do thinking in your armchair. You need not go into any phenomenon. When I say that thinking is verbal, I mean that you can play with words, and words have a tendency to create more words. Words can be arranged in a pattern, in a system. Just as you can make a house of playing cards, you can make a system of words. But you cannot live in it; it is only a house of cards. You cannot experience it; it is only a system of words – mere words.

Jean-Paul Sartre has written his autobiography, and he has given a name to his autobiography which is very meaningful, very significant. He has called his autobiography Words. It is not only his autobiography – this is the whole autobiography of Western thinking – words.

The Hindu mind believes in silence, not in words. Even if the Hindu mind speaks, it speaks about silence. Even if words are to be used, they are used against words. When you are creating a system out of words, logic is the only method. Your words must not be contradictory; otherwise the whole house will fall down. Your system must be consistent. If you are consistent with your words, then you are logical in your system.

So many systems can be created, and each philosopher creates his own system, his own world of words. And if you take his presuppositions, you cannot refute him, because it is only a play, a game of words. If you accept his premises, then the whole system will look right. Within the system there is an inner consistency.

But life has no systems. That is why the Hindu emphasis is not on word systems, but on actual realization, actual experiencing. So Buddha reaches the same experience that Mahavira reaches, that Krishna reaches, that Patanjali or Kapil or Shankara reaches. They reach to the same experience! Their words differ, but their experience is the same. So they say, “Whatsoever we may say, howsoever it may contradict what others have said, whenever someone reaches to the experience, it is the same.” The expression is different, not the experience. But if you have no experience, then there is no meeting point at all. My experience and your experience will meet somewhere, because experience is a reality and the reality is one.

So if I experience love and you experience love, there is going to be a meeting. Somewhere we are going to be one. But if I talk about love without knowing love, I create my own individual system of words. If you talk about love without knowing love, you create your own system of words. These two systems are not going to meet anywhere, because words are dreams, not realities.

Remember this: the reality is one, dreams are not one. Each one has his own individual dreaming faculty. Dreams are absolutely private. You dream your dreams; I dream my dreams. Can you conceive of it – I dreaming your dreams or you dreaming my dreams? Can you conceive of us both meeting together in a dream, or of two persons dreaming one dream? That is impossible. We can have one experience, but we cannot have one dream – and words are dreams.

So philosophers go on contradicting each other, creating their own systems, never reaching to any conclusion. The Greek mind taught in abstract terms, the Hindu mind in concrete terms of experience. Both have their merits and demerits, because if you insist on experiencing, then science is impossible. If you insist on logic, system, reason, then religion becomes impossible.

The Greek mind developed into a scientific world view; the Hindu mind developed into a religious world view. Philosophy is bound to give birth to science. Religion cannot give birth to science: religion gives birth to poetry, art. If you are religious, then you are looking into the Existence as an artist. If you are a philosopher, then you are looking into the world as a scientist. The scientist is an onlooker; the artist is the insider. So religion and art are sympathetic, philosophy and science are sympathetic. If science develops too much, then philosophy, by and by, gradually transforms itself into science and disappears. […]

In the West, religion has no roots. Poetry is also dying because it can exist only with religion. These two types of mind develop into totally different dimensions.

When I say that religion gives birth to poetry, I mean that it gives you an aesthetic sense, a sense which can feel values in life: not facts, but values; not that which is, but that which ought to be; not that which is just before you, but that which is hidden. If you can take a non-rational, aesthetic attitude, if you can take a jump into Existence by throwing your logic behind, if you can become one with the ocean of Existence, if you can become oceanic, then you begin to feel something which is Divine.

Science will give you facts, dead facts. Religion gives you life. It is not dead: it is alive. But then it is not a fact – then it is a mystery. Facts are always dead, and whatsoever is alive is always a mystery. You know it and yet you do not know it. Really, you feel it. This emphasis on feeling, experiencing, realization, is the last sutra of this Upanishad.

This Upanishad says: “I am that absolutely pure Brahman. To realize this is the attainment of Liberation.”

Before we probe deeply into this sutra, one thing more: if you have a logical mind, a Western way of thinking, a Greek attitude, then your search is for Truth, for what Truth is. Logic inquires about Truth, about what Truth is.

Hindus were never very interested in Truth, never! They were interested more in mokska – Liberation. They ask again and again, “What is moksha? What is freedom?” not “What is Truth?” And they say that if someone is seeking Truth, it is only to reach freedom. Then it becomes instrumental – but the search is not for Truth itself.

Hindus say that that which liberates us is worth seeking. If it is Truth, okay, but the search is basically concerned with freedom – moksha. You cannot find a similar search in Greek philosophy. No one is interested – neither Plato nor Aristotle: no one is interested in freedom. They are interested in knowing what Truth is.

Ask Buddha, ask Mahavira, ask Krishna. They are not really concerned with Truth: they are concerned with freedom – how human consciousness can attain total freedom. This difference belongs to the basic difference of the mind. If you are an observer, you will be interested more in the outside world and less with yourself, because with yourself you cannot be an observer. I can observe trees, I can observe stones, I can observe other persons. I cannot observe myself because I am involved. A gap is not there.

That is why the West remained uninterested in the Self. It was interested in others. Science develops when you are interested in others. If you are interested in trees, then you will create a science out of it. If you are interested in matter, then you will create physics. If you are interested in something else, then a new science will be born out of that inquiry. If you are interested in the Self, then only is religion born. But with the Self a basic problem arises: you cannot be there as a detached observer, because you are both the observer and the observed. So the scientific distinction, the detachment, cannot be maintained. You alone are there, and whatsoever you do is subjective, inside you: it is not objective.

When it is not objective, a Greek mind is afraid – because you are travelling into a mystery. Something must be objective so that if I say something others can observe it also. It must become social! So they inquire into what Truth is. They say, “If we all arrive at one conclusion through observation, experimenting, thinking, if we can come to a conclusion objectively, then it is Truth.”

Buddha’s truth cannot be Aristotle’s truth because Aristotle will say, “You say you know something, but that is subjective. Make it objective so we also can observe it.” Buddha cannot put his realization as an object on a table. It cannot be dissected. You cannot do anything with Self. You have to take Buddha’s statement in good faith. He tells you something, but Aristotle will say, “He may be deluded. What is the criterion? How to know that he is not deluded? He may be deceiving. How to know that he is not deceiving? He may be dreaming. How to know that he has come to a reality and not to a dream? Reality must be objective; then you can decide.”

That is why there is only one science and so many religions. If something is true, then in science two theories cannot exist side by side. Sooner or later one theory will have to be dropped. Because the world is objective, you can decide which is true. Others can experiment on it and you can compare notes.

But so many religions are possible because the world is subjective – an inner world. No objective criterion of judgement, of verification, is possible. Buddha stands on his own evidence. He is the only witness of whatsoever he is saying. That is why in science doubt becomes useful; in religion it becomes a hindrance. Religion is trust because no objective evidence is possible.

Buddha says something. If you trust him, it is okay; otherwise, there is no communion with him, there is no dialogue possible. There is only one possibility, and that is this: if you trust Buddha, you can travel the same path, you can come to the same experience. But, again, that will be individual and personal; again, you will be your own evidence. You cannot even say this, that “I have achieved the same thing Buddha has achieved,” because how to compare?

Think of it in this way: I love someone; you love someone. We can say that we are both in love, but how am I to know that my experience of love is the same as your experience of love? How to compare them? How to weigh? It is difficult. Love is a complex thing. Even simpler things are difficult. I see a tree and I call it green. You also call it green, but my green and your green may not be the same because eyes differ, attitudes differ, moods differ.

When a painter looks at a tree, he cannot be seeing the same green as you see when you look at it, because the painter has a more sensitive eye. When you see green it is just one green; when the painter sees a tree it is many greens simultaneously – many shades of green. When a Van Gogh looks at a tree it is not the same tree as you see. How to compare this – whether I am seeing the same green as you are seeing! It is difficult – in a way, impossible – even in such small simple things as the experience of green. So how to compare Buddha’s nirvana, Mahavira’s moksha, Krishna’s Brahman? How to compare?

The deeper we move, the more personal the thing becomes. The more in we go, the less possibility of any verification. And ultimately, one can only say, “I am the only witness of myself.” The Greek mind becomes afraid! This is dangerous territory! Then you can fall prey. Then you can fall a victim of deceivers, of deluded ones! That is why they go on insisting on objectivity: “What is Truth?” is the inquiry. Then one is bound to fall on objectivity.

The Hindu mind says, “We are not interested in Truth. We are interested in human freedom. We are interested in the innermost freedom where no slavery exists, no limitation; where consciousness becomes infinite, where consciousness becomes one with the Whole. Unless I am the Whole, I cannot be free. That which I am not will remain a limitation to me. So unless one becomes the Brahman, he is not free.”

This is the Eastern search. This too can be contemplated. You can think about it; you can also philosophize about it. This sutra says, “I am that absolutely pure Brahman. To realize this . . .” not “to contemplate about this,” not “to think about this” – because you can think, and you can think beautifully, and you can fall a victim to your own thinking. Thinking is not the thing. “To realize this is the attainment of Liberation.” Know well the distinction between thinking and realizing.

Ordinarily, everything is confused and our minds are muddled. A person thinks about God, so he thinks he is religious. He is not! You can go on thinking for lives together, but you will not be religious – because thinking is a cerebral, intellectual affair. It is done with words; life remains untouched. That is why, in the West, you will see a person thinking of the highest values and yet remaining on the lowest rung of life. He may be talking about love, theorizing about love, but look into his life and there is no love at all. Rather, this may be the reason, the cause: because there is no love in him, he goes on substituting it by theories and thinking.

That is why the East insists that no matter what you think, unless you live it, it is useless. Ultimately, only life is meaningful, and thinking must not become a substitute for it. But go around and look at religious people, so-called religious people; not only at religious people, but at religious saints: they are only thinking – because they go on thinking about the Brahman, go on talking about the Brahman, they think that they are religious.

Religion is not so cheap. You can think for twenty-four hours, but it will not make you religious. When mind stops and life takes over, when it is not your thoughts but your life, your very heartbeat, when your very pulse pulsates with it, then it is a realization. And to realize this is the attainment of Liberation – moksha, freedom. When one realizes that “I am the Absolute Brahman” – remember the word “realization” – when one becomes one with the Absolute Brahman, it is not a concept in one’s mind, now one is that, then one is free. Then the moksha, the Liberation, the freedom, is attained.

What to do? How to live it? This whole Upanishad was an effort to penetrate from different angles toward this one Ultimate goal. Now this is the last sutra. The last sutra says that you have gone through the whole Upanishad – but if it is only your thinking, if you have been only thinking about it, then howsoever beautiful it is, it is irrelevant unless you realize it.

Mind can deceive you – because if you repeat a certain thing continuously, you begin to feel that now you have realized it. If you go on from morning to evening repeating, “Everywhere is the Brahman, I am the Brahman, aham brahmasmi, I am Divine, I am God, I am one with the Whole,” if you go on repeating it, this repetition will create an autohypnosis. You will begin to feel – rather, you will begin to think that you feel – that you are. This is delusion; this will not help.

So what to do? Thinking will not help. Then how to start living? From where to start it? Some points: first, remember that if something convinces you logically it is not necessarily true. If I convince you logically about something, it doesn’t mean that it is true. Logic is groping in the dark. The roots are unknown: logic gives you substitutes for roots. […]

The whole life is a mystery. Everything is unknown, but we make it known. It doesn’t become known that way, but we go on labelling it and then we are at ease. Then we have created a known world: we have created an island of a known world in the midst of a great unknown mystery. This labelled world gives ease; we feel secured. What is our knowledge other than labelling things?

Your small child asks, “What is this?” You say, “It is a dog,” so he repeats, “It is a dog.” Then the label is fixed in his mind. Now he begins to feel that he knows the dog. It is only a labelling. When there was no label, the child thought it was something unknown. Now a label has been put: “dog,” so the child goes on repeating, “Dog! Dog!” Now, the moment he sees the animal, parallel in his mind the word “dog” is repeated. Then he feels he knows.

What have you done? You have simply labelled an unknown thing, and this is our whole knowledge. The so-called intellectual knowledge is nothing but labelling. What do you know? You call a certain thing “love,” and you then begin to think that you have known it. We go on labelling. Give a label to anything and then you are at ease. But go a little deeper, penetrate a little deeper beyond the label, and the unknown is standing. You are surrounded by the unknown.

You call a certain person your wife, your husband, your son. You have labelled; then you are at ease. But look again at the face of your wife. Take the label off, penetrate beyond the label, and there is the unknown. The unknown penetrates every moment, but you go on pushing it, huffing it. You go on trying – “Behave as the label demands!”

And everyone is behaving according to the label. Our whole society is a labelled world – our family, our knowledge. This will not do. A religious mind wants to know, to feel. Labelling is of no use. So feel the unknown all around; discard the labelling. That is what is meant by unlearning – to forget whatever you have learned. You cannot forget it but put it aside. When you look again at your wife, look at something unknown. Put the label aside. It is a very strange feeling.

Look at the tree you have passed every day. Stop there for a moment. Look at the tree. Forget the name of the tree; put it aside. Encounter it directly, immediately, and you will have a very strange feeling. We are in the midst of an unknown ocean. Nothing is known – only labelled. If you can begin to feel the unknown, only then is realization possible. Do not cling to knowledge, because clinging to knowledge is clinging to the mind, is clinging to philosophy. Throw labelling! Just destroy all labelling!

I do not mean that you should create a chaos. I do not mean that you should become mad. But know well that the labelled world is a false creation of man – a mind creation. So use it. It is a device, so it is good. Use it; it is utilitarian. But do not be caught in it. Move out of it sometimes. Sometimes, go beyond the boundaries of knowledge. Feel things without the mind. Have you ever felt anything without the mind – without the mind coming in? We have not felt anything. […]

You go to a tree. You say, “Okay, this is a mango tree.” Finished! The mango tree is finished by your label. Now you need not bother about it. A mango tree is a great existence. It has its own life, its own love affairs, its own poetry. It has its own experiences. It has seen many mornings, many evenings, many nights. Much has happened around it and everything has left its signature on it. It has its own wisdom. It has deep roots into the earth. It knows the earth more than you because man has no visible roots into the earth. It feels the earth more than you.

And then the sun rises – for you it is nothing because it is a labelled thing. But for a mango tree it is not simply that the sun is rising: something rises in it also. The mango tree becomes alive with the sun’s rising. Its blood runs faster. Every leaf becomes alive; it begins to explode. We also know winds, but we are sheltered in our houses. This tree is unsheltered. It has known winds in a different way. It has touched their innermost possibilities. But for us it is just a mango tree. It is finished! We have labelled it so that we could move on.

Remain with it for a while. Forget that this is a mango tree, because “mango tree” is just a word. It expresses nothing. Forget the word. Forget whatsoever you have read in the books; forget your recipe books. Be with this tree for a while, and this will give you more religious experience than any temple can give – because a temple, any temple, is finally, ultimately, made by man. It is a dead thing. This is made by the Existence itself. It is something that is still one with the Existence. Through it, the Existence itself has come to be green, to be flowering, to be fruitful.

Be with it; remain with it. That will be a meditation. And a moment will come when the tree is not a mango tree – not even a tree: just a being. And when this happens – that the tree is not a mango tree, not even a tree, but just a being, an existence flowering here and now – you will not be a man, you will not be a mind. Simultaneously, when the tree becomes just an existence, you will also become just an existence. And only two existences can meet. Then deep down there is a communion. Then you realize a freedom. You have expanded. Your consciousness expands. Now the tree and you are not two. And if you can feel oneness with a tree, then there is no difficulty in feeling oneness with the whole Existence. You know the path now. You know the secret path – how to be one with this Existence.

So repeating a sutra like, “Aham brahmasmi – I am Divine,” will not do. Realize that knowledge is useless. Be intimate with the Existence. Approach it not as a mind, but as a being. Approach it not with your culture, your education, your scriptures, your religious philosophies – no! Approach it naked like a child, not knowing anything. Then it penetrates you. Then you penetrate into it. Then there is a meeting, and that meeting is samadhi. And once you feel the whole Existence in your nerves, when you feel yourself spread all over the Existence, “Then,” this sutra says, “this is the attainment of Liberation” – to realize this, not to think about it.

So realization is a deep communion – oneness. What is the difficulty? Why do we remain outside this Existence? The ego is the difficulty. We are afraid of losing ourselves: that is the only difficulty. And if you are afraid of losing yourself, then you will not be able to know anything in this life. Then you can collect money, then you can strive for higher posts, then you can collect degrees, diplomas, you can become very respectable, but you will be dead – because life means the capacity to dissolve oneself, the capacity to melt.

When you are in love you melt: love is a melting. And if you cannot melt in love, then it is going to be simply sex; it cannot become love. When you love someone, you melt. When you do not love, you become cold: you freeze. When you love you become warm and you melt.

Religion is a love affair. One needs a deep melting into the Existence. Science is a cold thing. Logic is absolutely cold, dead; life is warm. The capacity to melt yourself is known in religious terms as “surrender”; and the capacity to be frozen, cold, is known in religion as “ego.” Ego makes you ice-cold, frozen. Then you are just stone, dead. We are afraid of losing ourselves; that is why we, are afraid of love. Everyone talks about love, everyone thinks about love – but no one loves, because love is dangerous. When you love someone, you are losing yourself: you will not be in control. You cannot know things directly; you cannot manipulate. You are melting. You are losing control.

That is why, when someone loves someone, we say he has “fallen” in love. We use the word “falling”: we say “falling in love.” It is a falling, really, because it is a melting. Then you cannot stand aloof, cold, in yourself – you have fallen.

Look at a person who lives through mind: you can never feel any warmth in him. If you touch his hand, you cannot feel him there. If you kiss him, you cannot feel him there. He is like a dead wall. No response comes out of him. A man who loves is in continuous response. Subtle responses are coming from him. If you touch his hand you have touched his soul. It is not only his hand: he has come to meet you there – totally! He has moved: his soul has come to his hand. Then there is warmth. And if your soul can also come to the hand to meet him, then there is a meeting – a communion.

This can happen with a tree. And if it happens at all with anyone then it can happen with anything else – anything! It can happen with a stone, it can happen with the sand on the beach, it can happen with anything if at all it can happen – if you know how to melt, if you know how to dissolve yourself, if you know how to move in response and not in words. Words are not responses. […]

Religion is a love approach. It is a deep melting. And when you melt into the Existence, you become free. What is this freedom? When you are not, you are free. Let me say it this way: when you are not, you are free. Until you are not there, you cannot be free. You are your slavery, so you cannot become free: the “I” cannot become free. When the “I” dissolves, there is freedom. When you are not, there is freedom. So moksha, freedom, means a total dispersion of the ego. So learn it, or unlearn the coldness that everyone has created around himself. Unlearn the coldness and learn warmth. […]

So learn the language of love and unlearn the language of reason. No one is going to teach you, because love cannot be taught. If you have become bored with your mind, if it is enough, throw it! Unburden yourself, and suddenly you begin to move into life. Mind has to be there, and then it has to be thrown. If you throw the mind, only then will you know that “I am the absolute pure Brahman,” because only the mind is the barrier. Because of the mind you feel yourself finite, limited.

It is like this: you have colored specs. The whole world looks blue. It is not blue; it is only your spectacles which are blue. Then I say, “The world is not blue, so throw your specs and look again at the world.” But you do not know the distinction between your eyes and the specs. You were born with your spectacles, so you do not know the distinction between where specs finish and ‘I’ begins.

You have been thinking that your specs are your eyes: that is the only problem; that your thoughts are your life: that is the problem. The identity that your mind is your life: that is the problem. Mind is just like specs. That is why a Hindu looks at the world differently and a Mohammedan looks differently and a Christian differently: because specs differ. Throw your specs, and then, for the first time, you will reclaim your eyes. In India, we have called this approach darshan. It is a reclaiming of the eyes.

We have eyes, but covered. We are moving in the Existence just like horses move when they are yoked in front of carts. Then their eyes have to be covered from both the sides. They must look straight ahead – because if a horse can look around everywhere, then it will be difficult for the driver. Then it will go running anywhere and everywhere, so a horse is allowed to see only straight ahead in order that his world becomes linear. Now his world is not three-dimensional: he cannot look everywhere. The whole Existence is lost except the street. It is a dead street, because streets cannot be alive. It is a dead street, a dead road. […]

Every road leads to death. If you want life, then for life there is no fixed road. Life is here and now, multi-dimensional, spreading in every direction. If you want to move into life, throw your specs, throw your concepts, systems, thoughts, mind. Be born into life here and now, in this multi-dimensional life, spreading everywhere. Then you become the center and the whole life belongs to you, not only a particular road. Then the whole life belongs to you! Everything that is in it, all, belongs to you.

This is the realization: “I am that absolutely pure Brahman.” You cannot reach to the Brahman by any road. The path is pathless. If you follow a path, you will reach something, but it is not going to be the All. How can a path lead you to the All? A path can lead you to something, but not the All. If you want the All, leave all the paths, open your eyes, look all around. The Whole is present here. Look and melt into it, because melting will give you the only knowledge possible. Melt into it!

Thus ends “The Atma Pooja Upanishad.” This was the last sutra; the Upanishad ends. It was a very small Upanishad – the smallest possible. You can print it on a postcard, on one side. Only seventeen sutras, but the whole life is condensed into those seventeen sutras. Every sutra can become an explosion; every sutra can transform your life – but it needs your cooperation. The sutra itself cannot do it; the Upanishad itself cannot do it.  You can do it!

Buddha is reported to have said: “The teacher can only show you the path; you have to travel it.” And, really, the teacher can only show you the path if you are ready to see it. Finally, the teacher is a teacher only if you are a disciple. If you are ready to learn, only then can a teacher show you the path. But he cannot force you; he cannot push you ahead. That is impossible! […]

The Upanishad can give you a light, but then that light will not be of any help, really. Unless you can create your own light, unless you start on an inner work of transformation, Upanishads are useless. They may even be dangerous, harmful, because you can learn them. You can easily become a parrot, and parrots tend to be religious. You can know whatsoever has been said, you can repeat it – but that is not going to help. Forget it. Let me blow out the candle. Whatsoever we have been discussing and talking, forget it. Do not cling to it! Start afresh! Then one day you will come to know whatsoever has been said.

Scriptures are only helpful when you reach realization. Only then do you know what has been said, what was meant, what the intention was. When you hear, when you understand intellectually, nothing is understood. So this can help only if it becomes a thirst, an intense inquiry, a seeking.

The Upanishad ends; now you go ahead and move on the journey. Suddenly, one day, you will know that which has been said and also that which has not been said. One day you will know that which has been expressed and, also, that which has not been expressed because it cannot be expressed.

One day Buddha was moving in a forest with his disciples. Ananda asked him, “Bhagwan, have you said everything that you know:”

So Buddha takes some leaves from the ground into his hand, some dead, fallen leaves – and he says, “Whatsoever I have said is just like these few leaves in my hand, and whatsoever I have not said and have left unsaid is like the leaves in this forest. But if you follow, then through these few leaves you will attain to this whole forest.”

The Upanishad ends, but now you start on a journey – deep, inward. It is a long and arduous effort. To transform oneself is the greatest effort – the most impossible, but the most paying. This Upanishad has been a deep intimate instruction. It is alchemical. It is for your inner transformation. Your baser metals can become gold. Through this process, your utmost possibility can become actual.

But no one can help you. The teacher only shows you the path – you have to travel. So do not go on thinking and brooding. Somewhere, start living. A very small lived effort is better than a great philosophical accumulation. Be religious – philosophies are worthless.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.2 #16

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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Contentment: The Dispersion of Desires – Osho

Sarva santosho visarjanamiti ya aevam veda.

Total contentment is visarjan, the dispersion of the worship ritual. One who understands so is an enlightened one.

Total contentment is wisdom. Three things have to be understood. First, what total contentment is; second, what wisdom is, what it means to be wise, to be Enlightened; and third, why contentment is wisdom. Whatsoever we know about contentment is a negative thing. Life is suffering, much suffering, and one has to console oneself. There are moments when one cannot do anything, so one has to cultivate a certain attitude of contentment; otherwise, it would be impossible to live.

So contentment for us is just an instrument – a survival instrument. Life consists of so much suffering that one has to create this attitude. That attitude saves you from much which would become impossible to bear, which would be unbearable if there were no attitude of contentment. But this is not the contentment which is meant by the rishi. That is with all of us. So that contentment is not wisdom: rather, that contentment is part of ignorance. When you cannot do anything, the situation will be unbearable. If you go on feeling that you cannot do anything – if you go on feeling that nothing is possible, the situation will become unbearable, it will be suicidal – so you change the whole thing. You interpret in such a way that, really, you begin to say that you can do much, but you do not want to – that much is possible, that things can be different, but you are not interested. That change of emphasis is really deceptive. But life exists through so many illusions. They are helpful.

Nietzsche has said that without lies it is difficult to survive. If one thinks he will live simply by truth, he cannot live. So we go on believing in so many lies. They are our foundations in a way; they help us to be on this earth. And so many so-called truths are not really truths for you: they are simply lies. For example, you do not know that the soul is immortal, but you go on believing in it. That helps. That is a lie for you; it is not your experience. But to live with death will be almost impossible, so this lie helps. Then you can forget death. You know that life is going to continue. Only the body is going to be dead; you are not going to be dead. You will be there.

This is a lie to you. You do not know anything because you do not know anything more than the body. You are acquainted only with your body, and that too not in its totality. You do not know anything which is immortal. If you know anything immortal in yourself, then this is not a lie. But to know that immortality one has to pass through conscious death.

All meditations are really an effort to die consciously. If you can die consciously, only then do you come upon something which is immortal, which cannot die. But we believe in an immortal soul just to deceive ourselves. Through this belief life becomes easier. You have solved the problem without solving it. Now there is no death for you, and you can live as if you are going to live forever. Not only those who are theists, but even those who are atheists – who do not believe in souls at all and thus cannot believe in immortal souls – they too live in such a way as if they are going to live forever. They also have to deceive themselves by believing that there is no death and that there are so many lives.

Kant has said that if there were no God, then too we would have to invent him because without God it is difficult to live. Why? Because without God no morality is possible. Without God the whole edifice of morality falls down. All heaven, all hell, the results of your karma, everything falls down. So Kant says that even if there is no God, he is needed. He is required because without him morality becomes impossible, and to live without morality will be very difficult.

We can live as immoral beings – we are already living so – we can live in immorality. That is not difficult; we always live in it. But even to live in immorality we need moral concepts. So an immoral person also goes on believing. He may not be good today, but tomorrow he is going to be good. He is not going to be good in this life, but he will be good in the next life.

So even a sinner goes on believing that he is not really a sinner. Any day he can be a saint – that possibility helps. Then he can hope for the possibility and continue to be whatsoever he is. So whatsoever he is, is just in a shadow. His being a sinner is just a changing thing. It is not going to be permanent: he is going to be a saint soon. He can hope for the saint and he can continue to be a sinner. If you want to be a sinner, you need some hope against your being a sinner. If you do not have any hope, it will be difficult to continue. So even those who are immoral need morality. And a God is needed as a central force, as a governing energy, otherwise the whole thing will be a chaos.

Kant then says: “Do not deny God.” Kant has written two books, very valuable books. First, he wrote one of the most valuable books of these two or three hundred years. He wrote The Critique of Pure Reason in which he says that there is no God because reason cannot prove him, and that book is based on pure reason. So he goes on thinking about it, he goes on, and ultimately he comes to say that there is no God, because for reason it is impossible even to conceive of a God since there is no possibility of proving the hypothesis. Since he is an honest man, he argues and finds that God cannot be proved. So because this hypothesis is irrational, he concludes there is no God.

Then he feels uneasy because he was a very moral, religious man. He was one of the keenest intellects, but a moral man, so he felt uneasy for twenty years continuously. Then he wrote a second book: The Critique of Practical Reason. The first was The Critique of Pure Reason. He followed pure reason wheresoever it led, but then it was not leading to God. For twenty years concluding that there is no God he felt an uneasiness, as if he had done something wrong. And the wrong was not that without God there was any inconvenience for Kant, but that he saw that if there is no God, then to the whole world morality disappears, evaporates.

Then he writes in the second book that it is not possible to prove God through pure reason, but practical reason needs him. So God is not a rational hypothesis, but a practically reasonable hypothesis. Without God the whole thing will become unreasonable, so he says God is – not because God is, but because God is needed. Without God man is not possible. So if he is not, he has to be invented because only then does morality become possible.

For us there are so many hypotheses like this. We go on believing in them – not because we know – but because if we do not believe in them then we will know our ignorance, our deep ignorance. We want to avoid it, we want to escape from it.

Contentment to us is really a deep escape. We cannot fight life. We try, but we cannot succeed in it. No one ever succeeds. Everyone comes upon barriers; there are limitations. Not only those who are weak, but also those who are very strong in our eyes, who are more strong than others and who come a little further ahead, they also come to barriers. And from those barriers there is no escape. Even a Napoleon has to die; even an Alexander comes to know things which he cannot win. Then what to do?

One thing is to remain continuously in discontentment. That will become a cancer. You cannot sleep with it; you cannot forget it at any moment. It will become a continuous worry, an inner cancer in the mind. So create a facade of contentment: “I am a contented man. It is not that I cannot win these barriers – I do not want to win.” This is a rationalization: “I do not want to. It is not that I cannot win – I am not interested in winning!” You withdraw yourself and you give a rational flavor to it.

This contentment is a rationalization – a shrewd, cunning rationalization. This gives you a certain hope that if you want to you can do it.

Look at it in this way. I have known many people. One man I know is a habituated alcoholic. For thirty years he has been trying to leave alcohol, but he cannot leave it. It has become impossible. But still he will go on saying, he will come to me and say, “Any day I can leave it – if I will it.” And he has tried continuously for thirty years. He has willed so many times, and was defeated, and again he will fall, but he still goes on saying, “If I will, I can drop this habit in a moment.”

Because of this hope that “If I will . . .” he still feels he is not a defeated man. He is already a defeated man, and this hope allows him to live. He goes on thinking that any moment he can drop it: he is not a slave; he can drop it – he is only not dropping it because he does not want to drop it.

So one day I asked him, “You go on saying ‘If I will . . .’ but have you not tried so many times, have you not willed so many times, to drop it?”

Then he said, “Yes, I have tried many times, but the effort was not really wholehearted.”

So I asked him, “Have you tried any time when the effort was wholehearted?”

He said, “No! If I try wholeheartedly, I can leave it this very moment.”

I asked him, “Is it possible for you to do it wholeheartedly? Is it in your capacity to will it wholeheartedly? Is your will your own?”

He became uneasy, because when you feel that your will is not your own you will have to face your imprisonment, your slavery. So he is in an imprisonment, but he goes on believing that he is free. That helps you to live in a prison as if it is your home.

This is how we go on rationalizing, and this man cannot leave alcohol unless he leaves this rationalization. If he begins to feel that “Even if I will, I cannot leave,” then he is realistic. Then he has come down to the earth. And if he comes to feel that “I cannot do anything even if I will,” then he can do something because then he will not be living in illusion – he will have stumbled upon reality. And you can do something with reality, but you cannot do anything with illusions.

To escape from reality, we create many mental attitudes. Freud is reported to have said that religion will continue to have power over man not because religion is true, but because man needs many illusions and man is not yet adult enough, mature enough, to live without religion. In a way he is right, because as far as the majority of humanity is concerned religion is a rationalized illusion. Only sometimes – with a Buddha, with a Patanjali or with a Kapil – does it happen that religion is not an illusion but the Ultimate Reality. But for others religion is an illusion. It substitutes for your life, compensates. Your reality is so horrible that you need some illusions to compensate for it.

For example, if a country is very poor, it is bound to believe in a heaven after this life. That is a compensation. The reality is so horrible, so ugly, and there is so much suffering all around for which nothing can be done. But you can do one thing: you can believe in some heaven after this life and that will help you to live in this ugly poverty. Then you can live easily because it is a question of a few years, or only a few lives, then you will be in heaven. So this poverty is not something permanent which you have to be worried about. It is just a passing phase, just as if you are in a waiting room in a railway station. Let it be ugly, let it be as it is, because you are not going to stay here. It is not your home. A train will come and you will be away from this waiting room.

If there is a heaven after this life, then this life becomes just a waiting room. Everyone is waiting for his train. When the train comes, you will go away. You need not be worried. You can close your eyes and chant the Gayatri – a spiritual mantra – close your eyes and chant a mantra because this is only a waiting room. Religious people are reported to have continuously made the simile that this world is just a waiting room. You are not to be here forever, so do not be worried about it.

But if the waiting room is going to be your home, if it is not a waiting room but the whole of reality, then it will be impossible to live there. Then it will be impossible to live there even for an hour. But if it is a waiting room, you can live even lives in it, because the hope is always for something else. Really, you are not there. You have transferred yourself mentally to somewhere else. This is a trick. The mind has gone to live somewhere else; only the body is here, so you can continue.

Much of religion, so-called religion, is a compensation, a consolation. Whatsoever you lack in life, you substitute for it in your dream. Whatsoever you lack, you substitute in your dreams! That is why every religion, every country, every race, believes in different types of heaven and hell. You believe in one heaven; in another country the concept of heaven will be different – because your problems are different and their problems are different, so you cannot compensate with one heaven.

For example, Tibetans believe in a heaven which will be warm. Indians believe in a heaven which will be cool. Indians believe in a hell which is going to be fiery, a burning fire, hot; Tibetans believe in a hell which is ice-cold. Why this difference? This difference is one of compensation. Tibetans are already in India’s heaven and India is already in their hell. India cannot believe in a heaven unless it is air-conditioned. What type of heaven can it be if it is not air-conditioned? It must be air-conditioned! That is a compensation. Your contentment is a compensation. It is a cunning mental trick.

So do not think that those among us who are contented are very simple. They are very complex and cunning. Whenever a person says, “I am content with my poverty,” do not think that he is a simple man. He has created a very cunning attitude.

Once I met a great Jaina monk. He is a leader and he has a big following. Hundreds and hundreds of Jaina monks believe in him as their teacher. So when I met him, he recited a small poem. He had written that poem. He is an old man, very old: he lives naked.

He recited the poem. The poem had only one central idea continuously repeated, and the idea was this: “You may be a king, you may be on your golden throne, but I am happy in my dust. I do not care about it. I am contented in my hut. You may be in your palace; I am contented in my hut. Whatsoever you have is nothing to me, because death is going to snatch everything away from you.”

Like this ran the whole piece. This mind is very cunning. What is he saying? If he is really not interested in being a king, why compare? If you are really contented in your dust, why think of golden thrones? I have never heard any poem written by a king that says, “You may be happy in your dust, but I am contented on my golden throne.” Why has no emperor written this? There must be some reason.

And why does this man say that whatsoever you have will be snatched away by death? He feels happy about it. “Okay, be on your golden throne. Soon I will see that death snatches away everything, and then you will know who was happy. I am happy because death cannot snatch anything away from me.” This is a very cunning attitude; this is not contentment. But he was writing on contentment. That was the title of his poem – “Contentment.”

Is this contentment? If this is contentment then this sutra is not concerned with it. This sutra has a different meaning, a different dimension of contentment. What is it? In your case, you desire something, you cannot get it; or, even if you get it, the desire is still unfulfilled. Then you rationalize.

Then you say, “I must live in contentment because desire gives pain, because desire gives suffering, because through desire anxiety is created, through ambition one suffers unnecessarily. So I give up: I do not desire because I do not like suffering.”

This is not the contentment of this sutra. This sutra means many things, so it will be good to enter through many doors. One door for total contentment is non-desiring. Our contentment comes after the failure of desire; this contentment comes through desirelessness. It is not that desire is suffering, but that desire is futile; desire is useless, absurd. Knowing this, feeling this, realizing this, one becomes desireless. Then one will not say, “I do not care about your golden throne.” Then one will not compare and will not say, “I prefer my hut.”

Buddha left his palace. The night he left and renounced, only his driver came along just to leave him on the boundary of his kingdom. The driver is weeping. He loves him and he feels attached to him. He thinks this is absurd: “What has happened to Prince Siddharth? What is he doing? Leaving the palace? Leaving the kingdom? Leaving his beautiful wife? Leaving everything everyone desires? He has gone mad!” So he goes on weeping. He cannot say anything. He is a mere driver of Buddha’s chariot. But he loves him, he feels attached, and he feels that Prince Siddharth is going to do something foolish.

This is unimaginable to a poor man. His reaction is natural. He feels that it is obviously madness. What is Siddharth going to do? Then when he leaves, he says only one thing; he says, “I am no one to say anything to you; I am just a driver. And also, it is not my business to interfere. Your order is your order, so I have brought you to the boundary of your kingdom. But if you do not mind, let me say to you a few words. What are you doing? It seems mad! This is what man lives to attain. This is what everyone aspires to be. You were born in it. You are a fortunate one. Why are you leaving? Remember the palace! Remember your beautiful wife! Remember your father! Remember the kingdom and the happiness it brings!”

Buddha says, “I cannot understand what you are talking about. I have not left any palace behind; I have not left any kingdom behind. I have left only a nightmare. The whole thing was burning in a fire. I am escaping from it. I have not renounced it because the very word ‘renunciation’ means you are leaving something valuable behind. I have not renounced anything; there was nothing to be renounced. The whole thing is on fire. It was a nightmare. So I have escaped from it, and I thank you because you have helped me to come out from it.”

After that Buddha is never reported to have talked about his palace, about his kingdom, about his beautiful wife – never again. If this renunciation is a bargain, if this renunciation is for something to be achieved in the future, if this renunciation is just an investment for heaven, moksha, then you cannot forget it so easily. He completely forgot it. Why? He was not leaving something for something else.

If you leave something for something else, it is a desire. If you simply leave it, it is desirelessness. If you leave it for something else, then it is still desire. If you simply leave it looking at its absurdity, futility, nonsense, then it is desirelessness. And when a man is desireless, he is content. This is the first door. When a man is desireless, he is content, because now how can you make him discontented? He is in contentment because no discontentment is possible now. [. . . .]

Because we desire that some expectations be fulfilled in the future, the mind is a constant discontent. Looking at the infinity of life, looking at the endless process of life, one is contented. This is not a defense measure. This is wisdom.

Thirdly, let us look at this from some other door: contentment means consciousness here and now; discontentment means consciousness somewhere else, in the future. Discontentment is concerned either with the past or with the future. Contentment is here and now, in the present. A person who lives moment to moment will be contented, but we never live from moment to moment. Really, we never live in the moment! We always live beyond it – somewhere in the future. We are moving like shadows, and we go on moving in the future. And the more you move in the future, the more discontented you will be, because the future never comes.

There is no future in Existence. In Existence nothing like the future exists. Existence is a continuity in the present; Existence is here and now. Expectation is somewhere else – and they never meet. That non-meeting is discontentment. You hope, and there is no meeting. You dream, and there is no fulfillment. And there is a gap – an eternal gap always between you and your hopes – so you move in discontentment. Discontentment means a movement that is always in the future and never in the present.

Buddha says that only this moment is real. That is why philosophy is known as kshanikvad – “momentism.” This “momentism,” only this moment, is real. Do not move beyond it! Be here and now! Consider it, think it over: just for this moment, if you are here and now, how can you be discontented?

Discontent needs comparison. You compare with the past which is no more. It is no more, but you compare with it. In some past moment you were somewhere else, and that moment was very beautiful – filled with happiness. But now you are sitting here, and you compare with that moment – discontent is given birth. Or, you can contemplate into the future about some moment when you will be meeting with your beloved or your lover, or something else. You compare – then you are discontented.

Discontent means comparison of something which is not in the present, which is either past or future, with your present. If you are really here with no comparison to the past or the future, then where is the discontentment? Then whatsoever is the case, you are contented.

Comparison brings discontentment; contentment is non-comparison. If you forget comparing, no one can make you discontented. It is you, your mind working in comparison, which creates discontentment. And then, to avoid this discontentment, you cultivate contentment. To negate one thing, first you create it; then to negate it, you have to create something else. And you will not succeed in it, because to think of creating contentment is moving again into the future.

So you will go on thinking that you have to cultivate contentment, and you will go on being discontented. You will begin to feel discontent even in relation to contentment, because you have not created it yet, because you are still far away from it – far away from the goal. So even the goal of contentment, the ideal of contentment, will create more discontentment.

Our contentment is after we have created the disease. The contentment of the Upanishads is not to create disease at all. Do not move in comparisons. Each moment is unique. It cannot be compared. And this is the nonsense, the stupidity of the human mind: that the moment with which you are comparing your present moment was not so beautiful as you think, because when you were actually in that moment, you were thinking about something else. So the glory, the beauty, the happiness of it, is just a false phenomenon.

Everyone says that childhood was golden, and no child seems happy about his childhood. Every child is trying to grow up soon. If he can take a jump, if a child is allowed to take a jump, he will become his father immediately. No child is happy about his childhood, because childhood is such a slavery, and childhood is such a weakness, and a child is so much at the mercy of others. He feels it. Everything hurts. Mother and father and everyone is so strong, and he alone is so weak and dependent that he cannot do anything on his own. From everywhere comes the commandment “Don’t!”

So every child is in deep misery. He contemplates the day when he will also be an adult – powerful. But when he is an adult, he will begin to say, “Childhood was good.” When he is old, just near death, he will create a golden dream. He will say, “What bliss childhood was! What a heaven!”

Psychologists say that this is also a trick of the mind. Because the reality is so hard, you have to escape somewhere. You are not capable of facing it, you do not want to encounter it. Really, the old man is now near death, so he wants to escape from it. When he begins to think about childhood, he has escaped, because childhood is as far away from death as anything. In his imagination, he has moved to being a child again. Now there is no death, no disease, no illness, no oldness. He is passing into the past, but why not into the future?

Old men always escape into the past, young men always into the future. Why? Because for an old man the future means death, so he doesn’t want to see the future. Every day on the calendar a new date appears and death comes nearer. He doesn’t want to see it, and the easiest way is to escape into the past. And to escape, you have to make it golden and beautiful, otherwise the journey will be boring. If you really escape into the real past, it is going to be a boredom.

Ask any old man, “If a chance is given by the Divine to you, will you be ready to repeat the same life again?” He will say, “No! The same life?” He feels horrible. The same life? No one will be ready to repeat the same life – not even the same childhood.

If you are given the opportunity that this can happen, that you are allowed to be born again to your parents and have the same childhood, you will say no. And just one moment before you might have been saying that “My father was just godlike, a holy man. And my mother? The climax of motherhood!” But if someone says, “Now be born to them again,” you are going to refuse – because whatsoever you have been saying about your mother, about your father, about your childhood, about your home, about your village, about your country, is just an imaginative creation. It is not concerned with reality. You have created it to escape from reality. A young man is thinking of the future, moving into the future, but contentment means to be here.

Socrates is dying, and on his face, there is so much contentment that everyone feels it is strange – because he is just on the verge of death, and death is a certainty with him. He is to be given poison. The poison is being made ready, being prepared just outside his room. The room is filled with his disciples and friends. They are all weeping and crying, and Socrates is lying on the bed. He says, “Now the time is coming near. Ask those persons who are preparing the poison if they are ready yet, because I am ready.”

Someone asks, “Are you not afraid of death? Why are you so anxious to die?”

Socrates says, “Whatsoever is, is. Death is there. Death is coming nearer. I must be ready to meet it, otherwise I will miss the moment of meeting death. So be silent. Do not disturb me. Do not talk about past days.” Many are talking of past days, of how beautiful it was to be with Socrates, and Socrates says, “Do not disturb me. I have known you. In the past, in the days which you are talking about, you were not so happy as you are saying.”

His wife is weeping, and the same wife struggled with him her whole life. It was a long conflict, a long problem – never solved. Socrates says, “It is strange! Why is my wife weeping? I would have thought she would be filled with happiness when I died, because my life was such a burden and such a suffering for her. Why is she weeping? She never enjoyed any moment with me, and now she is weeping for those golden moments. They were never there; only now she is creating a past which never was. It seems she has suffered because of me, and now she will suffer because of my absence.”

Such is the stupidity of the human mind. You will suffer the presence, then you will suffer the absence. You cannot live with someone, and then you cannot live without him. When he is with you, you will see all the faults. When he is gone, you will see all that was good in him. But you never face the reality.

Then the poison comes and Socrates says, “Be silent. Do not disturb me. Let me be here and now. Do not talk about the past. It is no more.”

Someone asks Socrates, “Are you not afraid of dying? You seem so contented. Your face shows such silence. We have never seen anyone dying in such beauty. Your face is so beautiful! Why are you not afraid?”

Socrates says, “Only two are the possibilities, two are the alternatives. Either I am going to die completely. If this death is ultimate and there will be no Socrates, why bother? If I am not going to be at all, there is no question. There will be no suffering because Socrates will be no more. Or, the second alternative: only the body will die, and I, Socrates, will remain. So why bother?

“These are the only two alternatives possible, and I do not choose either of the two. If I choose, then it will become a problem. If the one I choose doesn’t happen and the other happens, then there will be disturbance and discontent and fear and insecurity, and I will begin to tremble.

“But these are two alternatives, and I am not the chooser. The whole is the chooser. Whatsoever happens, happens. If Socrates will be no more, Socrates is unworried. Or, if Socrates will still be there, again there is no worry – then I will be. As I am here, I will be there. Then I will continue, so no need of any worry. Or, I will drop completely; then no one will remain to worry. But no more questions.” Socrates says, “No more questions! Let me face death.”

He takes the poison, he lies down, and then he begins to face, to encounter, death. No one else has ever encountered death in that way. It is unique – Socratic. He says, “Now my legs have become dead, but I am as much alive as ever. My feeling of I-ness is the same. The legs have become dead, my legs are no more. I cannot feel my legs, but my wholeness remains the same.”

Then he says, “My half-body has become dead. I cannot feel it. The poison is coming up and up. Sooner or later my heart will be drowned in it, and it is going to be a discovery whether, when my heart has been drowned, I feel the same or not. But there is no expectation – just an open inquiry.”

Then he says, “My heart is going, and now it seems it will be difficult for me to speak more. My tongue is trembling and my lips are now giving way. So these are going to be the last words. But still, I say, I am the same. Nothing has dropped from me. The poison has not touched me yet. The body is far away from me, going away and away. I feel I am without a body, but the poison has not yet touched me. But who knows? It may touch, it may not touch. One has to wait and see.” And he dies.

This is facing the moment without moving from it anywhere. Then you have contentment. Contentment means life here and now, living moment to moment without any escapes.

That is why this sutra says that total contentment is visarjan. Visarjan is a particular process. Visarjan means dispersion.

In India, whenever someone worships, the deity is created. For example, Ganesh, Ganesh is created – an image is created. For the worship, the image is taken as Divine, so Divinity is invoked in it. Then, for particular days, for a particular length of time, it is worshipped. When the worship is over, the deity has to be dissolved into the sea or into a river. That is known as dispersion – visarjan. This is rare. This happens only in India, nowhere else in the world. Everywhere else they have permanent images of gods. Only India has impermanent images. This is rare!

India says that nothing is permanent and nothing can remain permanent – not even your image of a god. Because you have created it, it cannot be a permanent thing. Do not fool yourself. When the time is over, go and throw it back. Your god cannot be permanent. Go on throwing your gods – creating them and throwing them. Use them and throw them. Only then can you reach that God which is not your creation. The images are your creations, so they have an instrumental value. They are devices. They are necessary because you are still so far away from the reality, and it is difficult for you to conceive of an imageless God.

Create an image, but do not stick to it. No clinging is allowed. When the worship is over, throw it; throw it back into the mud. It is again mud. Then do not retain it. This is a very deep psychological process, because to throw a god needs courage, to throw a god needs detachment.

You were just worshipping – falling at the feet of the god, crying, weeping, dancing, singing – and now you yourself go and throw it into the sea. So it was just a device – nothing permanent in it. You used it as an instrument. Now the worship is over, so throw it and create it again whenever you need. This constant creating and throwing will always help you to remember that your created gods are not real gods. They are symbolic.

Hindus were never in favor of creating stone images. They came with Buddhists and Jainas, and with Buddhists and Jainas came temples. Hindus were really never in favor of stone images, because they give a false permanence. They give a false appearance of permanence.

A buddha dies, but his stone image remains when even Buddha himself dies. How can an image of Buddha be permanent? But a stone image gives a false appearance of permanence.

Hindus have believed in mud gods. Make a mud god; then rains will come and you will know what happens to your god. It is your god; this must not be forgotten. And all gods created by men are mud gods. They are bound to be because man himself is an impermanent entity. He cannot create anything permanent.

So do not create a false appearance. This is called dispersion – visarjan. This word is beautiful. First create the image, then uncreate it. It is not destroyed. Visarjan means “uncreated.” Create, then uncreate it; then let everything go again to its basic elements.

Hindus say death is a dispersion. You are created in your birth; you are a mud image. Then in death the elements move again to their original source. You are dispersed, and that which was not born in you, which was even before your birth, will remain after your death. But your image will disperse. The same is to be done with human gods, man-made gods – create them, then disperse them.

This sutra says that dispersion means contentment. Contentment is the dispersion – the visarjan of your worship. Why? Why call contentment “dispersion”? It is very deeply related.

Creation means desire. You cannot create unless you are filled with desire. Hindus are very logical in a way. They say God created the world because he felt the desire to create it. Even God cannot create the world without desire: he was filled with desire! Creation means desire. You cannot create without desire. Desire allows you movement, effort, then you create. Then how to uncreate?

If there is still desire, you cannot uncreate. Uncreation means no more desire, desirelessness, contentment. That is why this sutra relates visarjan to contentment. If a man is totally in contentment, then everything will disperse.

This is what Buddhists call Nirvana – cessation of desire. Buddha says that when there is no desire you will cease: you will disperse into the cosmos. Still, the desiring mind will ask, “But I will be somewhere. Will I not be somewhere? Where will I be?”

Buddha says, “It will be just like a flame going out.” Can you find out where it is, where it has gone? You blow out a candle, and the flame goes out. Where is it? So Buddha says, “It has simply dispersed. It went to the elements, to the source.”

It is everywhere or nowhere, and both are meaningful. If you say it is everywhere, it also means that now it is nowhere. You cannot find it anywhere now because it is everywhere. Or, you can say it is nowhere now because to find it is impossible. [. . .]

This sutra says that contentment is visarjan – contentment is dispersion. When you are contented totally, you are out of the birth cycle. Now you will not be reborn again, because only desire is reborn, not you, and because of desire you have to follow. You become a shadow of your desire. The desires move ahead and you move behind. Now there is no desire, and one does not need any movement. One is freed from the wheel of rebirth, from samsara– the world. This is what Liberation is.

Disperse yourself. Through this dispersion, you disperse your desires. Attain the center of Being through contentment. Contentment is a centering in oneself, and one becomes unmoving, still, silent.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.2, Discourse #14

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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Toward the Silence of the Innermost Center – Osho

Nischalatwam pradakshinam.

Stillness is pradakshina, the movement around That for worship.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.2 #7

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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Awareness is the Technique for Centering Oneself – Osho

Chidagni swaroopam dhoopah.

To create the fire of awareness in oneself is dhoop – the incense.

For philosophy, many are the problems – infinite. But for religion there is only one problem, and that problem is man himself. It is not that man has problems, but man is the problem. And why is man the problem?

Animals are not problems. They are so unconscious, blissfully unconscious, ignorant that there is no possibility of there being any awareness of problems. Problems are there, but animals are not aware. There are no problems for gods because they are totally conscious. When the mind is a total consciousness, problems simply disappear like darkness. But for man there is anguish. The very being of man, the very existence of man, is a problem, because man exists between these two realms: the realm of the animals and the realm of the gods.

Man exists as a bridge between two infinities: the infinity of ignorance and the infinity of knowledge. Man is neither animal nor Divine. Or, man is both – animal and Divine; that is the problem. Man is a suspended existence – something incomplete, something which is still to be – a becoming, not a being.

Animals have beings. Man is a becoming. He is not; he is only becoming. Man is a process. The process is incomplete. It has left the world of ignorance and it has not reached the world of knowledge. Man is in between. That creates the problem, the tension, the anguish and the constant conflict.

There are only two ways to be at peace, to be without problems: one is to fall back, to regress, to fall back to the world of animals; the other is to transcend, to go forward and to be a part of the Divine Being. To be either animals or gods: these are the two alternatives.

To fall back is easy, but it is going to be a temporary thing – because once you have grown you cannot fall back permanently. You can regress for a moment, but then you are again thrown forward, because there really is no way to go back. There is really no possibility of falling back. You cannot be a child again if you have become a young adult, and you cannot become young again if you have become old. If you know something, then you cannot fall back to the state when you were ignorant. You cannot go back, but for a moment you can forget the present and relive the past in your memory, in your mind.

So man can regress to the animal level. It is blissful, but temporary. That is the reason why intoxicants, drugs, alcohol, have such an appeal. When you become unconscious through some chemical, you have fallen back for a moment. For the time being you are not a man, you are not a problem. You are again part of the world of animals, the unconscious existence. Then you are not a man; that is why there are no problems.

Humanity has been constantly finding things from soma rasa to LSD in order to forget, to regress, to be just childlike, to regain the animal innocence, to be without problems: that is, to be without humanity, because to me humanity means to be a problem. This falling back, this regression, is possible, but only temporarily. You will come back again, you will be a man again, and the same problems will be standing and waiting for you. Rather, they will be more acute. Your absence is not going to dissolve them. They will become more complicated and complex. Then a vicious circle is created.

When you are again back and conscious, you have to face problems which have become more complicated because of your absence. They have grown. Then you have to forget yourself again and again, and every time you forget and regress, your problems are growing: you will have to face your humanity again and again. One cannot escape that way. One can deceive oneself, but one cannot escape that way.

The other alternative is arduous: that is, to grow to be a being. When I say “regress,” I mean to become unconscious – to lose the small consciousness that we have. When I say “to be a Being,” I mean to lose unconsciousness and to be totally conscious.

As we are, only a part is conscious – only a very small fragment of the Being is conscious – and the remaining whole continent is just dark. A small island is conscious, and the whole continent, the mainland, is under darkness. When this small island also becomes dark, you have regressed, you have fallen back. This ignorance is blissful because now you are not aware of the problems. Problems are there, but you are not aware. So at least for you it appears there are no problems.

This is the ostrich method: close your eyes, and your enemy is not there because when you cannot see – this childish, juvenile logic says that when you cannot see something – it is not: unless you see something it is not. So if you cannot feel problems they are not there!

When I say “to be a Being,” to transcend humanity, to become Divine, I mean to be totally conscious – to be not only an island, but the whole continent. This awareness will also lead you beyond problems because problems are there basically because of you. Problems are not objective realities: they are subjective phenomena. You create your problems! And unless you are transformed, you will go on creating problems. You solve one, and really, in solving that one, you will create many because you remain the same. Problems are not objective things. They are part of you. Because you are such, you create such problems.

Science tries to solve problems objectively, and science thinks that if there are no problems man will be at ease. Problems can be solved objectively, but man will not be at ease – because man himself is the problem. If he solves some problem, he will create others. He is their creator. If you give a better society, the problems will change, but problems will remain. If you give better health, better medicine, the problems will change, but problems will remain.

Quantitatively, there will be as many problems as ever because man remains the same; only the situation changes. You change the situation: old problems will not be there, but there will be new problems. And new problems are more problematic than any old problems because you have become accustomed to old problems. With new problems you feel more inconvenience. That is why, in our times, we have changed our whole situation, but problems are there – more fatal, more anxiety creating.

That is the difference between religion and science. Science thinks problems are objective, from outside somewhere – that they can be changed without changing you. Religion thinks problems are here inside, in me – rather, that I am the problem. Unless I change, nothing is going to be different. Shapes will be different, names will be different, but the substance will remain the same. I will create another world of problems; I will go on projecting new problems.

This man, unconscious to his own being, unaware of himself, is the creator of problems. Not knowing who he is, what he is, without any acquaintance with himself, he goes on creating problems – because unless you know yourself you cannot know for what you are existing and living, you cannot know where you have to move, you cannot feel what your destiny is, and you can never feel any meaning. You will go on doing many things, but everything will ultimately lead you to frustration – because if you do anything without knowing why you are, for what you are, it is not going to give you a deep contentment. It is irrelevant. The very point is missed, your effort is wasted.

And, ultimately, everyone is frustrated. Those who succeed are more frustrated than those who are not successful because those who are not successful can still hope. But those who are successful cannot even hope. Their case becomes hopeless. So I say nothing fails like success.

Religion thinks in terms of subjectivity, science in terms of objectivity: “Change the situation; do not touch the man.” Religion says, “Change the man; the situation is irrelevant.” Whatsoever the situation, a different mind, a transformed being, will be beyond problems. That is why a Buddha can exist in absolute peace as a beggar, and a Midas cannot live at peace even when he has the alchemical miracle with him: whatsoever he touches becomes gold. The situation with Midas has become golden; everything he touches becomes gold. But this doesn’t change anything. Rather, Midas is in a more complicated problematic situation.

Now our world has created, through science, a Midas situation. Now we can touch anything and it becomes gold. A Buddha living as a beggar lives, in such a deep peace and silence that emperors become jealous of him. What is the secret? The emphasis on man – the inside of man – is significant, not the situation. So you must change the inside of man. And there is only one change: if you grow in your awareness, you change, you mutate. If you fall down in your awareness, again you change, you mutate. But if your awareness is lessened, you fall down toward animals. If your awareness is increased, you move up toward the gods.

This is the only problem for religion: how to increase awareness. That is why religions have always been against drugs. The reason is not moral or ethical – no! And the so-called moralist puritans have given a very wrong color to the whole thing. For religions, it is not a question of morality that someone takes drugs. It is not a question of morality at all because morality only begins when I come in contact with someone else.

If I take alcohol and become unconscious, it is no one else’s affair. I am doing something with myself. Violence is a question for morality, not alcohol. Even if I give you a promise to meet you at a particular time and I miss it, it is immoral because somebody else is involved. Alcohol can become a moral question only if someone else is involved, otherwise it is not a moral question at all. It is something you do with yourself. For religions it is not a question of morality at all. For religions it is a deeper question: it is a question of increasing or decreasing awareness.

Once you have the habit of falling down into unconsciousness, it will be more and more difficult to increase your awareness. It will become more and more difficult because your body will not support you in increasing awareness. It will support you in decreasing it. The very metabolism of your body will help you to be unconscious. It will not help you to be conscious. And anything that becomes a barrier in being more aware is a religious problem, not a moral problem.

So sometimes it happens that you may find an alcoholic to be a more moral person than a nonalcoholic, but never a more religious person. An alcoholic may be more compassionate than a nonalcoholic; he may be more loving than a non-alcoholic, he may be more honest, but never more religious. And when I say “never more religious,” I mean never a more aware and conscious person.

This growth into awareness creates anguish. […]

You can feel more life, you can be more blissful, but you will become aware of death. You will be more blissful, but in the same proportion you will have to suffer anguish.

This is the problem, this is what man is – a deep anguish, a deep division between two polarities. You can feel life, but when death is there everything is poisoned. When death is there, every moment everything is poisoned. How can you be alive when death is there? How can you feel blissful when suffering is there?

And even if a moment of happiness comes to you, it is fleeting. And when the moment is there, even then you are aware that somewhere behind the unhappiness is there, misery is there, hiding. It will come up soon – sooner or later. So even a moment of happiness is poisoned by your consciousness that somewhere unhappiness is hidden, is coming near. It is just by the corner, and you will have to meet it.

Man becomes conscious of the future, conscious of the past, conscious of life, conscious of death. Kierkegaard has called this consciousness “anguish.” You can fall back, but that is a temporary measure. Again you will come up. So the only possibility is to grow – to grow in knowledge to a point from where you can jump out of it, because the jump is possible only from the extremes. One extreme we have: to fall back. We can do it, but it is impossible because we cannot remain in it. We are thrown forward again and again. The other possibility is that if we grow in awareness, there is a point when you are totally aware, where you transcend. […]

This sutra is concerned with awareness: “To create the fire of awareness in oneself is the incense” – to create the fire of awareness in oneself! First it must be understood what is meant by awareness. You are walking; you are aware of many things: of the shops, of people passing by you, of the traffic, of everything. You are aware of many things, only unaware of one thing: yourself. You are walking on the street: you are aware of many things; you are only not aware of yourself! This awareness of the self, Gurdjieff has called “self-remembering.” Gurdjieff says, “Constantly, wherever you are, remember yourself.”

For example, you are here. You are listening to me, but you are not aware of the listener. You may be aware of the speaker, but you are not aware of the listener. Be aware of the listener. Feel yourself here; you are here. For a moment a glimpse comes, and again you forget. Try!

Whatsoever you are doing, go on doing one thing inside continuously: be aware of yourself doing it. You are eating: be aware of yourself. You are walking: be aware of yourself. You are listening, you are speaking: be aware of yourself. When you are angry, be aware that you are angry. In the very moment that anger is there, be aware that you are angry. This constant remembering of the self creates a subtle energy – a very subtle energy in you. You begin to be a crystallized being.

Ordinarily, you are just a loose bag. No crystallization, no center really – just a liquidity, just a loose combination of many things without any center – a crowd, constantly shifting and changing, with no master inside. By awareness is meant be a master! And when I say, “Be a master,” I do not mean to be a controller. When I say, “Be a master,” I mean be a presence – a continuous presence. Whatsoever you are doing or not doing, one thing must be constantly in your consciousness: that you are.

This simple feeling of oneself, that one is, creates a center – a center of stillness, a center of silence, a center of inner mastery – an inner power. And when I say, “an inner power,” I mean it literally. That is why this sutra says, “the fire of awareness.” It is a fire. It is a fire! If you begin to be aware, you begin to feel a new energy in you – a new fire, a new life. And because of this new life, new power, new energy, many things which were dominating you just dissolve. You have not to fight with them.

You have to fight with your anger, your greed, your sex, because you are weak. So, really, greed, anger and sex are not the problems. Weakness is the problem. Once you begin to be stronger inside, with a feeling of inner presence that you are, your energies become concentrated, crystallized on a single point, and a Self is born. Remember, not an ego but a Self is born. Ego is a false sense of Self. Without having any Self, you go on believing that you have a Self. That is ego. Ego means a false self. You are not a Self, and still you believe that you are a Self. […]

Ego is a false notion of something which is not there at all.

“Self” means a center.

This center is created by being continuously aware, constantly aware. Be aware that you are doing something – that you are sitting, that now you are going to sleep, that now sleep is coming to you, that you are falling. Try to be conscious in every moment, and then you will begin to feel that a center is born within you, things have begun to crystallize, a centering is there. Everything now is related to a center.

We are without centers. Sometimes we feel centered, but those are moments when a situation makes you aware. If there is suddenly a situation, a very dangerous situation, you will begin to feel a center in you because in danger you become aware. If someone is going to kill you, you cannot think in that moment, you cannot be unconscious in that moment. Your whole energy is centered, and that moment becomes solid. You cannot move to the past; you cannot move to the future. This very moment becomes everything. And then you are not only aware of the killer: you become aware of yourself – the one who is being killed.

In that subtle moment you begin to feel a center in yourself. That is why dangerous games have their appeal. Ask someone going to the top of Gourishanker, of Mount Everest. When for the first time Hillary was there, he must have felt a sudden center. And when for the first time someone was on the moon, a sudden feeling of a center must have come. That is why danger has appeal. You are driving a car and you go on to more and more speed, and then the speed becomes dangerous. Then you cannot think; thoughts cease. Then you cannot dream. Then you cannot imagine. Then the present becomes solid. In that dangerous moment, when any instant death is possible, you are suddenly aware of a center in yourself. Danger has appeal only because in danger you sometimes feel centered.

Nietzsche somewhere says that war must continue because only in war is a Self sometimes felt – a center is felt – because war is danger. And when death becomes a reality, life becomes intense. When death is just near, life becomes intense, and you are centered. But in any moment when you become aware of yourself, there is a centering. But if it is situational, then when the situation is over it will disappear.

It must not be just situational. It must be inner. So try to be aware in every ordinary activity. When sitting on your chair, try it: be aware of the sitter. Not only of the chair, not only of the room, of the surrounding atmosphere, be aware of the sitter. Close your eyes and feel yourself; dig deep and feel yourself. […]

Lin-chi was lecturing one morning, and someone suddenly asked, “Just answer me one question: Who am I?”

Lin-chi got down and went to the man. The whole hall became silent. What was he going to do? It was a simple question. He should have answered from his seat. He reached the man. The whole hall was silent. Lin-chi stood before the questioner looking into his eyes. It was a very penetrating moment. Everything stopped. The questioner began to perspire. Lin-chi was just staring into his eyes.

And then Lin-chi said, “Do not ask me. Go inside and find out who is asking. Close your eyes. Do not ask, ‘Who am I?’ Go inside and find out who is asking, who is this questioner inside. Forget me. Find out the source of the question. Go deep inside!”

And it is reported that the man closed his eyes, became silent and suddenly he was an Enlightened One. He opened his eyes, laughed, touched the feet of Lin-chi and said, “You have answered me. I have been asking everyone this question and many answers were given to me, but nothing proved to be an answer. But you have answered me.”

“Who am I?” How can anyone answer it?

But in that particular situation – a thousand persons silent, a pin-drop silence – Lin-chi came down with strained eyes and then just ordered the man, “Close your eyes, go inside and find out who the questioner is. Do not wait for my answer. Find out who has asked.”

And the man closed his eyes. What happened in that situation? He became centered. Suddenly he was centered, suddenly he became aware of the innermost core.

This has to be discovered, and awareness means the method to discover this innermost core. The more unconscious you are, the further away you are from yourself. The more conscious, the nearer you reach to yourself. If the consciousness is total, you are at the center. If the consciousness is less, you are near the periphery. When you are unconscious, you are on the periphery where the center is completely forgotten.

So these are the two possible ways to move. You can move to the periphery; then you move to unconsciousness. Sitting at a film, sitting somewhere listening to music, you can forget yourself; then you are on the periphery. Even listening to me, you can forget yourself. Then again you are on the periphery. Reading the Gita or the Bible or the Koran, you can forget yourself. Then you are on the periphery. Whatsoever you do, if you can remember yourself then you are nearer to the center. Then someday, suddenly you are centered. Then you have energy.

That energy, this sutra says, is the fire. The whole life, the whole existence, is energy, is fire. Fire is the old name; now they call it electricity. Man has been labelling it with many, many names, but fire is good. Electricity seems a little bit dead; fire looks more alive.

This inner fire, the sutra says, is the incense. When someone is going to worship, you take some incense, dhoop, with you. That dhoop, that incense, is useless unless you have come with your inner fire as the incense.

This Upanishad is trying to give inner meanings to outer symbols. Every symbol has an inner counterpart. The outer is good in itself, but it is not enough. And it is only symbolic; it is not the substance. It shows something, but it is not the real. You must have seen incense. It is burning everywhere in temples. It is good in itself, but it is only an outer symbol. An inner fire is needed. And just as incense gives a perfume, the inner fire also gives it.

It is said that wherever Mahavir moved, everyone would feel his presence as a subtle perfume. That has been said about many persons. It is possible! The more you are centered inside, the more your whole presence becomes a perfume. And those who have the receptivity, they will feel it.

So enter a temple, not with outer incense, but with inner incense. And this inner incense can be achieved only through awareness. There is no other way. Act mindfully. It is a long, arduous journey and it is difficult to be aware even for a single moment. The mind is constantly flickering. But it is not impossible. It is arduous, it is difficult, but it is not impossible. It is possible! For everyone it is possible. Only effort is needed – and a wholehearted effort. Nothing should be left: nothing should be left inside untouched. Everything should be sacrificed for awareness. Only then is the inner flame discovered. It is there.

If one goes to find out the essential unity between all the religions that have existed or that may exist ever, then this single word “awareness” can be found.

Jesus tells a story:

A master of a big house has gone out, and he has told his servants to be constantly alert – because any moment he can come back. So for twenty-four hours they have to be alert. Any moment the master can come – any moment! There is no fixed moment, no fixed day, no fixed date. If there is a fixed date, then you can sleep, then you can do whatsoever you like, and you can be alert only on that particular date because then the master is coming. But the master has said, “I will come at any moment. Day and night you have to be alert to receive me.”

This is the parable of life. You cannot postpone. Any moment the Divine may just come; any moment the master may come. One has to be alert continuously. No date is fixed; nothing is known about when that sudden happening will be there. One can do only one thing: be alert and wait!

Rabindranath has written a poem, “The King of the Night.” It is a very deep parable.

There was a great temple with one hundred priests, and one day the chief priest dreamt that the Divine Guest was to come that night – the Divine Guest for whom they had been waiting and waiting. For centuries the temple had been waiting for the King to come, the Divine King to come. The deity of the temple was to come!

But the chief priest was in doubt: “It may be just a dream. And if it is just a dream, then everyone will laugh. But who knows? – it may be true. It may be a true intimation.”

The chief priest brooded that morning over whether to tell it to others or not. Then he became afraid. It may be time! So, then, in the afternoon, he told it. He gathered all the priests, closed all the doors of the temple, and said to them, “Do not go out and do not tell anyone! It may be just a dream; no one knows. But I have dreamt it, and the dream was so real. In the dream, the deity, the King of this temple, said, ‘I am coming tonight. Be ready!’ So we have to be alert. This night we cannot go to sleep.”

So they decorated the whole temple; they cleaned the whole temple; they made every arrangement to receive the Guest. And then they waited. Then, by and by, doubts began to arise. Then someone said, “This is nonsense. This was just a dream, and we are wasting our sleep.”

Half the night passed, then more doubts began to arise. Then someone rebelled and said, “I am going to sleep. This is nonsense. The whole day is wasted, and still we are waiting. No one is to come!” Then many supported him. Many laughed: “It is just a dream, so why pay so much attention to it!”

Then even the chief priest yielded and said, “It may have been just a dream. How can I say that it was real? We may be just stupid, foolish, just following a dream.”

So they said, “Only one person should wait at the gate and all the rest can go to sleep. If someone comes, he will inform us.”

Ninety-nine priests went to sleep, and the only priest who was appointed said, “When ninety-nine think that this is just a dream, why should I waste my sleep? And if the Divine Guest is to come, let him come. He will come in a great chariot, so there will be much noise, and everyone will be awakened.” He closed the doors, then he also fell asleep.

Then the chariot came, and the wheels of the chariot created much noise. Then someone who had been asleep said, “It seems the King is coming. It seems the wheels of the chariot are making much noise.” Someone else who was just going to sleep said, “Do not waste time; no one is coming. This is not the chariot. These are just clouds in the sky.”

And then the Guest came and knocked at the door. Someone again said, in his sleep, “It seems someone has come and is knocking at the door.”

So the chief priest himself said, “Now go to sleep. Do not go on disturbing again and again. No one is knocking at the door. It is just the wind.”

In the morning they were weeping and crying because the chariot had come in the night. There were marks on the street and the Divine Guest had come up to the door and knocked. There were footmarks on the dust, on the steps.

There are many parables. Buddha and Mahavir have told many stories with only one essential idea – that Enlightenment is at any time, at any moment, possible. It can happen any moment. One has to be alert and conscious and aware.

This parable of “The King of the Night” is not just a parable. It is real. We all are interpreting things in that way, and all our interpretations are just rationalizations of our sleep and for our sleep. We say, “It is nothing but the wind, it is nothing but the clouds.” Then we can sleep at ease. We go on denying religion, we go on denying anything that will break our sleep. We rationalize that there is no God, that there is no religion, that there is nothing – nothing but wind, nothing but clouds. Then we can sleep at ease, comfortably.

If there is a God, if there is Divinity, if there is a possibility of something higher than we are, then we cannot sleep so conveniently. Then we will have to be alert and awake and struggling, making efforts and endeavoring. Then transformation becomes our immediate concern.

Awareness is the technique for centering oneself, for achieving the inner fire. It is there hidden; it can be discovered. And once it is discovered, then only are we capable of entering the temple – not before, never before.

But we can deceive ourselves by symbols. Symbols are to show deeper realities to us, but we can use them as deceptions. We can burn an outer incense, we can worship with outer things, and then we feel at ease that we have done something. We can feel ourselves religious without becoming religious at all. That is what is happening; that is what the earth has become. Everyone thinks they are religious just because they are following outer symbols, with no inner fire.

Make efforts even if you are a failure. You will be in the beginning. You will fail again and again, but even your failure will help. When you fail to be aware for a single moment, you feel for the first time how unconscious you are.

Walk down the street, and you cannot walk a few steps without becoming unconscious. Again and again, you forget yourself. You begin to read a signboard, and you forget yourself. Someone passes, you look at him, then you forget yourself.

Your failures will be helpful. They can show you how unconscious you are. And even if you can become aware that you are unconscious, you have gained a certain awareness. If a madman becomes aware that he is mad, he is on the path toward sanity.

-Osho

From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.2 #1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

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